More than 14 million of the world's most vulnerable people, a third of them small children, could die by 2030 because of the Trump administration's dismantling of US foreign aid, research projected on Tuesday.

The study in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet was published as world and business leaders met at a United Nations conference in Spain to try to bolster the reeling aid sector.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) had provided over 40 percent of global humanitarian funding until Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.

Two weeks later, Trump's then-close advisor -- and the world's richest man -- Elon Musk boasted of having put the agency "through the woodchipper".

The funding cuts "risk abruptly halting -- and even reversing -- two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations", warned study co-author Davide Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

"For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable........

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