Global efforts to control HIV face a renewed threat after international financing for the response fell sharply in 2025, the United Nations body focused on the epidemic said on Monday. UNAIDS said the funding decline could allow HIV infections and related deaths to climb again unless political and financial backing is restored.
The agency detailed the situation in a 60-page report published as an International AIDS conference opened in Brazil. The report said that international contributions dropped by 18% to $7.3 billion in 2025, marking the lowest level of donor funding in nearly twenty years and jeopardizing gains that had pushed new infections and AIDS-related deaths to their lowest levels in more than three decades.
UNAIDS highlighted recent shifts in donor behaviour, noting that Washington previously provided about 75% of international HIV funding before President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025. That month he ordered a temporary halt to all HIV-related funding before restoring life-saving HIV work days later, although most prevention efforts were curtailed.
The report warned of the broader implications: "The international community has entered a period of profound political and financial upheaval that threatens decades of hard-won gains against HIV," it said. "Without renewed commitment and action, the world risks a resurgence of the HIV epidemic."
Although some countries increased domestic spending to compensate for lost external support, those increases only partially offset the decline in international assistance. UNAIDS said total HIV resources fell by 6% last year overall.
The report also emphasized that the global goal to end AIDS by 2030 is now off track, citing both reduced funding and concurrent health crises - including outbreaks such as Ebola - as factors hampering progress. UNAIDS reported that roughly 1.2 million people contracted HIV last year.
Prevention services experienced some of the steepest cuts, with particular impacts in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that accounts for about half of new global infections. National data cited in the report showed that Cameroon, Nigeria and Zambia each recorded declines exceeding 50% in the number of people receiving pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
UNAIDS stressed that disruptions to international funding "severely impacted HIV prevention, testing and key components of treatment programmes, such as the range of community-led services that reach the people most affected by HIV." The report portrays a fragile HIV response that could unravel further without renewed global solidarity and efforts to tackle inequalities.
As the International AIDS conference convenes in Brazil, the agency called for urgent action to shore up funding and maintain vital prevention, testing and treatment services. The report does not provide a roadmap for specific new funding sources, but its findings underline the scale of the financing shortfall and the uneven capacity of governments to fill the gap.
For policymakers and health sector stakeholders, the UNAIDS assessment signals an urgent need to address both the political volatility in donor countries and the persistent inequalities that leave certain regions and populations more exposed to service interruptions.