Modeled estimate. Estimated by a model from published research. Methodology last updated .
Modeled estimate of deaths from neglected tropical diseases attributable to the end of USAID funding for NTD programs, with sources.
This represents the estimated number of deaths due to Neglected Tropical Diseases attributed to termination of funding for USAID neglected tropical disease programs.
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminths, and trachoma are prevalent in poor countries. Combined, they cause at least 200,000 deaths per year.
NTD control and elimination requires mass drug administration and preventive treatment in endemic communities. The five NTDs listed above require 1.3 billion preventive treatments annually.
Source: Neglected Tropical Diseases Impact Methodology
USAID support for neglected tropical disease programs was suspended on January 24, 2025.
Mortality statistics for many countries receiving USAID lag by a year or more, so the number presented for the current death toll is estimated using a mathematical model.
This estimate is an interpolated estimate based on samples of output produced by the NTD mortality model at the Impact Counter project. USAID contributed at least 67% of the budget necessary for prevention and treatment of these five diseases, which are modeled as responsible for 30% of the global NTD burden. The Impact Counter project estimates that this will cause roughly 30,000 deaths per year across all age groups (not only children). The rate fitted from the sampled output implemented here corresponds to about 23,100 deaths per year; where they differ, the displayed counter follows the sampled model output.
On average, this model attributes one neglected-tropical-disease death to the funding cut every 22.75 minutes.
The Impact Counter's trackers freeze, by design, when they reach their one-year projection horizon (one year after the relevant funding cuts began); the project does not extrapolate beyond that point. This site's counter continues past that horizon, modeling later values as linear projections of the Impact Counter's final rates. That extension is this site's editorial choice, not the Impact Counter's.
Note: Unlike several other estimates on this site — malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis — this estimate has not been updated to use a more recent model, because no comparable epidemiological model of the funding cuts has been published for neglected tropical disease deaths. The Center for Global Development's cost-effectiveness tracker corroborates the overall scale of mortality from the USAID cuts but publishes no per-disease rates, and its authors describe their own figures as guesswork. The Impact Counter model therefore remains this counter's current source; this site revisits that choice as better models are published.
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Executive branch culpability for these deaths is not due to the lack of funding but to the abrupt termination of funding, which did not allow time for the aid effort to transition to other world aid agencies and NGOs. Regardless of whether other aid is now arriving, it could be, and that possibility reduces executive branch culpability over time, although the amount and schedule are debatable.
Culpability is modeled as attenuating over a four-year transition period from October 2025 through September 2029. Aid organizations have not offered a reliable schedule for the transition of NTD aid, so this model makes the assumption that this aid transition will follow the same four-year window over which the published PEPFAR transition plan schedules its handover. The model assumes culpability will follow an S-curve — slow at first while handover was barely possible, fastest in the middle years, tapering as an orderly transition nears completion.
This schedule reflects a judgment about how long a reasonable, orderly handover would have taken, not a measurement of the actual transition. Readers who weigh this differently can adjust it: the Model Explorer on this counter allows choosing other culpability schedules — including the staircase of the actual PEPFAR transition plan and this site's original two-year taper — as well as a maximum-culpability cap for those who attribute only a share of these deaths to executive branch policy.
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