UNAIDS Calls For Nations To Fill The Gap As Trump Pulls Funding
Even before the disruption, 9.2 million people who have HIV were still not able to get access to life-saving treatment in 2024, according to the Global Aids Update.
The United Nations program overseeing the fight against AIDS urged countries to step up with support to fight the disease as the Trump administration pulls back, and warned that a permanent halt in funding by the US would undo years of progress.
“This is not just a funding gap — it’s a ticking time bomb,” UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said in a statement accompanying the program’s 2025 Global Aids Update. “We have seen services vanish overnight. Health workers have been sent home. And people — especially children and key populations — are being pushed out of care.”
The report highlighted the effect of large-scale funding cuts from the US on countries most affected by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The group estimates that a decision by the Trump administration to discontinue The US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or Pepfar, would lead to more than four million additional AIDS-related deaths and more than six million additional new HIV infections by 2029.
Even before the disruption, 9.2 million people who have HIV were still not able to get access to life-saving treatment in 2024, according to the Global Aids Update.
Currently, the numbers of people becoming infected by HIV and dying from AIDS-related causes are at their lowest levels in 30 years, the UN report’s authors said. By the end of 2024, HIV infections were down by 40% and AIDS-related deaths by 56% since 2010. By 2030, five countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, were on track for a 90% decline in new infections.
Demonstrators join laid-off staff members from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Pepfar program during a protest on Capitol Hill in Washington in February. (Source: Tierney L Cross/Bloomberg)
Pepfar had committed $4.3 billion to UNAIDS in 2025. With that financing suddenly withdrawn, treatment and prevention programs around the world were severely disrupted, the report said. Byanyima told Bloomberg in June that her organization had lost almost 50% of its funding.
President Donald Trump has suspended funding from most foreign aid programs since his inauguration. A separate study from the British medical journal Lancet concluded that cuts to the US Agency for International Development could result in about 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
