Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response - 2025 World AIDS Day report

This progress was underpinned by a financing landscape that, although still not reaching the amounts needed to end AIDS, had shown global commitment from international donors and countries affected by HIV. Between 2010 and 2024, domestic HIV financing increased by 28%, and international financing increased by 12%.

Over the past couple of years, however, a remarkable drop in funding for health has occurred, specifically for HIV. International aid for health from major donors is projected to drop by 30–40% in 2025 compared with 2023, causing immediate and severe disruption to health services in low- and middle-income countries.

Further, in late January 2025, the funding landscape for HIV abruptly shifted. The largest donor to the HIV response since the beginning, which accounted for 75% of international funding for HIV, temporarily halted all HIV-related funding. The global response immediately entered crisis mode. Clinics were forced to shut their doors, essential frontline health workers were furloughed, and community programmes reaching the most vulnerable people stopped.

Combined with intensifying economic and financial pressures on many low- and middle-income countries, these collective funding cuts have resulted in a growing gap between the amounts available for HIV programmes and the amounts needed to reach the 2030 targets.

Even before the precipitous drop in funding in 2025, efforts to lay the foundation for a sustainable HIV response were uneven. Core components of long-term sustainability—preventing new HIV infections and maximizing viral load suppression among people living with HIV, which in turn prevent AIDS-related deaths and further HIV transmission—remained unachieved, with more than 11 million people living with HIV (27%) having an unsuppressed viral load in 2024.

Abrupt HIV funding reductions, persistent funding shortfalls and the perilous risks facing the global HIV response are having profound, lasting effects on the health and well-being of millions of people throughout the world. 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; over 2 million adolescent girls and young women have been deprived of essential health services; and community-led organizations have been devastated, with many being forced to close their doors.

This report aims to capture the impacts of these disruptions, and the efforts countries and communities are making to overcome them and transform the HIV response to sustain the gains into the future. The impact has been most pronounced among lifesaving HIV prevention programmes and community organizations. The report also highlights examples of resilience from countries and communities that are enabling the response to move forward in the face of potentially existential threats.

Progress towards ending AIDS as a public health threat is real, but it remains fragile. The decisions made in the coming weeks and months will determine whether the world ends AIDS by 2030 or whether the gains will be lost, numbers of new infections increase, and more people die from AIDS-related causes.

World AIDS Day 2025 offers an ideal moment for global reflection—on the massive progress made towards ending AIDS, on the new world order relating to HIV, and on the urgent need for solidarity and global commitment to end AIDS as a public health threat.