2025 Global AIDS Update: Progress, Peril, and Promise for Ending AIDS

Progress in the Global AIDS Response

• 📈 By the end of 2024, new HIV infections had decreased by 40% and AIDS-related deaths by over 54% since 2010.
• 💉 77% of people living with HIV globally (31.6 million) were on life-saving treatment, indicating that ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 was within reach.
• 👶 4.4 million children were protected from acquiring HIV since 2000, highlighting a successful public health response that has saved nearly 27 million lives.

Peril and Setbacks in HIV Response

• 📉 Massive cuts to HIV funding from major donors since January 2025 have put the global response in peril, risking the reversal of progress.
• ⚠️ If support is not restored, an additional 6 million HIV infections and 4 million AIDS deaths are projected by 2029, returning the epidemic to its deadliest peak.
• ⚖️ A global backlash against rights, laws, and policies has led to an increase in countries criminalizing key populations, with bans on safe sex relations and sex work hindering prevention and treatment access.

Promise and Resilience in the Face of Crisis

• 💪 Communities facing funding cuts are demonstrating extreme resilience, adapting and showing commitment to sustaining the HIV response.
• 🌍 25 out of 60 low and middle-income countries are increasing their domestic budgets and focus on self-sustaining their HIV responses.
• 🔬 New innovations, such as long-acting injectable HIV prevention medicines effective twice a year, offer significant promise for preventing transmission.

Call for Global Solidarity and Future Outlook

• 🤝 The HIV response, forged in crisis, requires renewed global solidarity to rebuild a sustainable, inclusive, and nationally-led multisectoral response.
• 🎯 The end of AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 is still achievable but necessitates global unity and the deployment of new innovations.
• ❓ Current research for an HIV vaccine and cure is ongoing but not yet successful; long-acting injectables are the most significant recent advancement.
• ⚠️ The criminalization of key populations persists due to stigma and discrimination, requiring structural changes to improve prevention and treatment scale-up.
• 📊 Modeling of potential future deaths is conducted by UN AIDS data scientists in collaboration with country experts and universities, considering factors like the cessation of PEPFAR support.

Donor Landscape and Sustainability

• 🇺🇸 PEPFAR, a significant US government initiative, has been crucial, contributing substantially to the global HIV response alongside the Global Fund.
• 🌐 While some donor countries are reducing commitments, there's a growing trend of implementing countries, like South Africa, Thailand, and Namibia, increasing their domestic funding for HIV responses.
• 💡 Future sustainability relies on domestic resource mobilization, broadening donor solidarity, engaging the private sector and foundations, and developing cost-effective, simplified models for countries to sustain.

Future Scenarios for the AIDS Crisis

• worst-case scenario involves a return to high death rates and new infections without a vaccine or cure, coupled with exorbitant treatment costs due to drug resistance.
• 🚀 The best-case scenario is ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 through global solidarity, deploying new innovations, and closing treatment gaps, though 9.2 million people living with HIV still need treatment.