International funding cuts disrupted global response to HIV, UN report says

Millions of people are without access to care because of global funding cuts for treatment and prevention programs, according to the UN agency for combating AIDS.

After the United States stopped funding when President Donald Trump took office in January, UNAIDS claimed in a report released on Tuesday that the world’s response to the disease “immediatly entered crisis mode.”

On January 25, the Trump administration had stopped providing military assistance to Israel and Egypt.

Some HIV funding was restored in the second half of the year, but some programs haven’t since Trump’s decision to abolish the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

According to UNAIDS, the cuts were made because “many low and middle-income nations are experiencing more pressing economic and financial pressures.”

According to the statement, funding gaps are “having profound, lasting effects” on people’s lives all over the world.

More than 2 million adolescent girls and young women have been denied essential health services, and community-led organizations have been devastated, with many of them forced to close their doors, according to the report, “people living with HIV have died due to service disruptions, millions of people at high risk of acquiring HIV have lost access to the most effective prevention tools available.”

Due to the funding cuts, Burundi’s population used the preventive HIV medication PrEP, which is known as PrEP, decreased by 64 percent, in Uganda by 38 percent, and Vietnam by 21 percent. Nigeria’s domestic distribution decreased by 55%.

The UNAIDS executive director, Winnie Byanyima, said the funding crisis has revealed how fragile the progress we’ve worked so hard to achieve.

People are hidden behind every statistic in this report, including missing newborns for HIV testing, preventing support for young women, and communities that have been abruptly evacuated from their homes. We can’t let them go.

UNAIDS reported that there were some positive trends emerging, including national and regional initiatives to support health programs and treat the disease, despite the financial crisis.

“Communities are uniting to support the AIDS response and one another.” Governments have taken swift action to increase domestic funding where possible, the report stated, even though the most affected nations are also some of the richest, which limits their ability to invest in HIV.

“Some nations have maintained or even increased the number of people receiving HIV treatment,” this may be a result.

In order to give lower-income nations’ international debt more room to grow, the report recommends restructuring and suspending payments until 2030.

In times of pandemics, it also advocated “inspiration with prizes rather than patents, and treating health innovations as global public goods.”

The report also highlighted “a growing human rights crisis” as a further obstacle to the fight against AIDS in addition to declining funding.

The number of nations criminalizing same-sex sexual activity and gender expression increased in 2025, according to UNAIDS, for the first time since it began monitoring punitive laws in 2008.