An uncounted number of extra people have died from AIDS and 2.5 million have lost access to antiretroviral medicine to block the spread of HIV because of cuts to global programs since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the UN body fighting AIDS says.

“Persistent funding shortfalls and the perilous risks facing the global HIV response are having profound, lasting effects on the health and wellbeing of millions of people throughout the world,” the UNAIDS agency said on Tuesday in a report titled “Overcoming Disruption”.

The report, released ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, said UNAIDS’s community partners had reported deaths of people living with HIV due to the closure of local clinics and treatment programs, although the exact number of additional deaths remained unclear as data collection was ongoing.

The global AIDS response community entered “crisis mode”, UNAIDS said, when its largest donor the United States, which accounted for 75 per cent of international HIV funding, temporarily halted all of its contributions earlier in the year.

The White House, asked for comment, rejected the assessment as “totally false” and said Mr Trump had a “humanitarian heart”.

“The Trump administration is simultaneously ensuring all programs funded by American taxpayers align with American interests, just as this president was elected to do,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.

Other donor countries have also dramatically scaled back foreign aid programs this year, including European countries pressed by Mr Trump to ramp up spending on defence instead.

Though some HIV programs have since resumed with funds from a US program known as PEPFAR — the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — overall funding continues to decline, jeopardising 2030 targets to end AIDS as a public health threat, the agency said.

UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima said her agency was working with at least 30 countries to improve domestic financing to move away from dependency on international donors.

But she said the funding gap could not be closed immediately, and major challenges remained.

UNAIDS says 40.8 million people globally are living with HIV, with 1.3 million new infections reported in 2024.

Prevention services ‘devastated’
Between 2010 and 2024, annual AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 54 per cent to 630,000, and new infections have also dropped by 40 per cent.

But maintaining that progress has been put in peril by funding cuts which have “devastated” prevention services, the report found.

It was estimated that 2.5 million people had lost access to the PrEP preventive HIV medication as of October 2025 due to donor funding cuts.

Ms Byanyima said the distribution of preventive HIV medicines had fallen by 31 per cent in Uganda, 21 per cent in Vietnam and 64 per cent in Burundi.

In Nigeria, the distribution of condoms fell by 55 per cent from December last year to March this year.

A survey conducted earlier this year by UNAIDS and women’s rights group the ATHENA Network found that nearly half of women and adolescent girls reported disruptions to HIV prevention and treatment services in their communities.

“Behind every data point in this report are people — babies and children missed for HIV screening or early HIV diagnosis, young women cut off from prevention support, and communities suddenly left without services and care,” Ms Byanyima said.

“We cannot abandon them. We must overcome this disruption and transform the AIDS response.”

Source: Reuters

- Agencies