Cuts to the U.S.-funded President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) have caused widespread disruptions in HIV services globally, forcing clinics to close and staff to lose their jobs, according to a report released on Tuesday, July 21st, 2026. The report, produced by amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, highlights the fallout from funding reductions that followed dismantling efforts by the Trump administration last year.

Launched in 2003, PEPFAR is credited with saving at least 26 million lives. However, spending on prevention fell by 51% between the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, based on PEPFAR's own expenditure data. Elise Lankiewicz, a policy associate at amfAR, described the disruptions as "very widespread."

Despite these challenges, the U.S. State Department reported in April 2026 that PEPFAR provided standard HIV treatment to 20.6 million people in over 50 countries between July and September 2025, a figure stable compared to the previous year. Additionally, the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women started on PrEP more than doubled to 103,000.

Contrastingly, a separate study published in June 2026 in the journal Nature Health found that nearly two million fewer people living with HIV received PEPFAR-supported antiretroviral treatment in fiscal year 2025 compared with the prior year, marking a decline of about 10%.

The report underscores a widespread degradation of the infrastructure essential for delivering HIV services worldwide, with the most severe impact on populations and partners critical to controlling the epidemic. It raises significant concerns about the stability of the program going forward. As noted, "And unfortunately, with HIV and infectious disease, each day is deadly," and "Each day that we don't have those systems in place, you see new infections."

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