Amid U.S. funding cuts, the International AIDS Conference faces an uncertain future
The International AIDS Conference is addressing the future of global HIV efforts amid significant funding cuts from the United States. Despite scientific progress in treatment, experts fear that reduced financial support could lead to a resurgence of the pandemic.
Why it matters
Funding disruptions threaten to reverse decades of progress in global public health and the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
That's the theme of this year's International AIDS conference, which began this week in Rio de Janeiro.
This year, there are encouraging signs regarding the ongoing epidemic — even though 1.2 million people acquired the virus in 2025, the number of AIDS-related deaths was 547,000, the lowest number in 30 years.
Yet the fate of the global campaign to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 is now in doubt, as the Trump administration's aid cuts have taken a tremendous toll.
"The question is no longer whether [we] can end AIDS, the question is whether we choose to end AIDS," Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of the agency UNAIDS , said at a press conference on Monday. "When prevention disappears, infections rise. When treatment is interrupted, people die,"
"The HIV pandemic is not over," she said. "Without urgent action, it could resurge."
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