US President Donald Trump’s order to pause funding for foreign development would cut off millions of Afghans from health services, according to a UN official.

Pio Smith, regional director for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA), told a Geneva press briefing on Tuesday that the continued absence of the funding could cause over 1,000 maternal deaths across the impoverished country over the next three years.

“If I just take the example of Afghanistan, between 2025 and 2028 we estimate that the absence of US support will result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths and 109,000 additional unintended pregnancies.”

The official further said over 9 million people in Afghanistan would lose access to services and over 1.2 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan would be affected similarly due to the closure of health facilities.

Afghanistan has one of the highest death rates in the world for pregnant women, with a mother dying of preventable pregnancy complications every two hours, Smith said.

“What happens when our work is not funded? Women give birth alone, in unsanitary conditions…Newborns die from preventable causes,” Smith said. “These are literally the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Across the Asia-Pacific region, UNFPA receives about $77 million in US funding, Smith added.

President Trump ordered the 90-day pause in January, right after taking office.

The IPPF, a federation of national organizations that advocates reproductive health, calculates that it would have to forego at least $61 million in US funding over four years in 13 countries, most of which are in Africa.

In Afghanistan, anxiety over food supplies has partly pushed up prices. The Taliban-ruled government in the country says dozens of charities have had to halt work.

Afghanistan is facing what UN agencies have described as “one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters” since the collapse of Kabul in mid-August 2021, which came after the United States’ disastrous withdrawal from the country.

The US military withdrew its forces from Afghanistan 20 years after they invaded the country to topple the Taliban, in a war that killed, according to one estimate, between 897,000 and 929,000 people.