Eighteen months after the Trump administration dismantled much of USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development), Afghanistan is bearing some of the heaviest consequences, with Refugees International attributing more than 160 deaths to the funding cuts. Remote villages in Herat province, once served by mobile clinics and nutrition programmes funded largely by USAID, have lost access to basic medical care, with maternal and infant mortality rising sharply. Taliban restrictions requiring women to be accompanied by a male guardian in public have compounded the crisis, leaving mothers unable to seek emergency treatment independently — a deadly combination that health workers on the ground say is claiming lives that could otherwise be saved.