A large group of authors, including UrbanBirth Collective team members, raise a powerful alarm in BMC Medicine about the global fallout from the U.S. government's suspension of funding for the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program.

- For over 40 years, DHS has served as the backbone of health data in more than 90 low- and middle-income countries, helping shape policies on maternal health, HIV care, malaria, nutrition, and more. With funding cuts, countries like Nigeria, Malawi, and the DRC now risk losing access to lifesaving information.

- The authors show how this blackout doesn’t just delay reports—it disrupts vaccine rollouts, hides maternal deaths, silences rural voices, and undermines research.

- Communities and in particular women gave their stories to improve public health; now those stories may never be heard.

- Students and scientists will lose a critical training ground. Governments will struggle to plan. The trust between people and the systems meant to protect them is breaking.

- Authors demand urgent restoration of access and call for a reimagined, decentralized system—led by the Global South—to preserve health data as a public good.

‍

The pre-print of this paper was downloaded >500 times within 3 months of its publication.