The 2025 funding crisis has thrown the AIDS response into turmoil with massive disruptions to HIV prevention and community led services, particularly for the most vulnerable. However, the new report by UNAIDS shows evidence that resilience, investment and innovation combined with global solidarity still offer a path to end AIDS.

The global response to HIV has suffered its most significant setback in decades, warns a new UNAIDS report released today ahead of World AIDS Day 2025. Overcoming Disruption, Transforming the AIDS Response details the far-reaching consequences of international funding reductions and lack of global solidarity which sent shockwaves through low- and middle-income countries heavily affected by HIV.
Abrupt reductions in international HIV assistance in 2025 have deepened existing funding shortfalls. The OECD estimates that external health assistance is projected to drop by 30–40% in 2025 compared with 2023, causing immediate and even more severe disruption to health services in low- and middle-income countries.

“The funding crisis has exposed the fragility of the progress we fought so hard to achieve,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “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. We cannot abandon them. We must overcome this disruption and transform the AIDS response.”

A global system in shock
Prevention services—already under strain before the crisis—have been hit hardest. Major reductions in access medicines to prevent HIV (pre-exposure prophylaxis referred to as PrEP) and sharp declines in voluntary medical male circumcision for HIV prevention have left a growing protection gap for millions. The dismantling of HIV prevention programmes designed with and for young women have deprived adolescent girls and young women of HIV prevention, mental health, and gender-based violence services in many countries.
This increases their vulnerability further—already in2024 there were globally 570 new HIV infections every day among young women and girls aged 15—24.
Community-led organizations—the backbone of the HIV response and who were able to reach people most vulnerable to HIV—report widespread closures, with more than 60% of women-led organizations suspending essential programmes. Services for key populations including men who have sex with men, sex workers, people who inject drugs and transgender people have also been severely impacted.
A failure to reach the 2030 global HIV targets of the nextGlobal AIDS Strategy could result in an additional 3.3 million new HIV infections between 2025 and 2030.

Mounting human rights concerns
The funding crisis has unfolded against a deteriorating global human rights environment, with particularly severe consequences for marginalized populations.