NBC News
In his speech on the state of the nation of 2019, the president, Donald Trump, promised to increase spending to prevent infections and attend to people who contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with the ambitious goal of controlling the epidemic in the country by 2030. Last year, this federal initiative, called “end the HIV epidemic”, showed progress.
However, this year the Republicans intend to drastically cut the funds for the prevention and treatment of HIV. The Trump Administration proposed in its budget application for 2026 to eliminate the HIV prevention division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Republicans of the House of Representatives intend to cut almost 2,000 million dollars in HIV -related expenses in their Federal Health Expenses Law. The Senate, meanwhile, proposes to maintain financing for HIV basically at the current levels in its corresponding proposal.
To become law, any fund of financing must be approved by both Congress Chambers, which would require the support of at least some Democratic senators, and have Trump’s support.
But, although for now it is only proposals, they reflect the position of many Republicans – which control the White House and both cameras of Congress – on this issue and would lead to a drastic reduction in financing that has often had the support of both parties.
“Donald Trump and the Republicans of the House of Representatives are drastically cutting the programs that save lives to be able to grant fiscal cuts to the billionaires and the large companies,” said Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat by Wisconsin, co -author of the Bipartisan Law Project on Health Expenditure in the Senate.
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Neither the White House nor the president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, Republican in Louisiana, responded to the requests for comments.
After decades to benefit from a solid federal financing, in large bipartisan, the defenders of the fight against HIV have seen how the current Trump administration has drastically trimmed the prevention and treatment efforts of the disease, including the widespread elimination of subsidies for research of the National Health Institutes (NIH, in English) and international aid.
However, the leaders of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, a NIH division, heard on Thursday an optimistic speech by the director of the NIH, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. In his recorded speech, Bhattacharya pointed out as a maximum priority the achievement of the objectives of the program “End the HIV epidemic”.
“Now we have the ability to really end the HIV epidemic by 2030, to reduce the transmission of HIV to very, very low levels. And we just have to find out how to do it,” he said.
Bhattacharya referred in particular to the recent approval of Yezugo, an injectable medication of prolonged action for HIV prevention, or PREP, which practically eliminated the risk of contracting HIV in clinical trials, and promised that NIH would investigate the best way to implement yeztugo, as well as improve the success rate of HIV treatment in the country.
However, he did not mention the generalized cancellation by the Trump Administration of existing subsidies for the research on HIV prevention earlier this year, nor the White House efforts and the Republicans of the House of Representatives for the end of the program “End the HIV epidemic” and the HIV prevention work of the CDC.
In response to the NBC News question about the apparent contradiction between his speech and the objectives and actions of the Trump administration and the Republicans of the House of Representatives, Bhattachary In the prep.
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The defenders of the fight against HIV said that they are still concerned that the destabilization that the Trump administration has brought to the fields of HIV prevention and investigation attenuate the impact of Yeztugo.
HIV policy experts expressed a cautious optimism in that the Senate financing bill will prevail, although they said that the mood between them remains gloomy.
“People are devastated,” said Drew Gibson, Defense Director of Aids United. “But we are not going to stay with crossed arms and accept this as a destiny.”
Even if the fixed financing of the Senate is imposed, the concern between HIV defenders that the Trump Management and Budget Office (OMB, in English) persists, as it has done in other circumstances, refuses to distribute the funds that Congress has assigned to combat the virus.
Kathleen Ethier, who left the CDC at the beginning of January and whose long career includes a period in the Division of Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, said that the Trump administration measures in relation to the adjacent division dedicated to HIV, including mass and subsequent reincorporations, had already committed the HIV prevention mission of the CDC.
“All the people with whom I have spoken and who are still in the CDCs fear for their jobs, are demoralized by leadership and cannot do much work,” he said.
Ernest Hopkins, a veteran political strategist from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said that, departing from tradition, the OMB had prevented HIV -related pressure groups, like him, to meet them during this budget cycle.
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Eliminating the HIV budget from the CDC, as proposed by the bill of the Chamber of Deputies, “would have an absolutely disastrous impact,” said Hopkins. “We would see a significant increase in HIV infections in all areas.”
The OMB did not respond to a request for comments.
Last year, the CDC estimated that, between 2018 and 2022, the annual HIV transmissions decreased by 12 %, until reaching 31,800. (This year no updated estimate has been published due to the dismissals between the personnel who perform these calculations). It should be noted that, in the 48 most affected counties and other jurisdictions subject to the financing of the program “End the HIV epidemic”, the cases decreased approximately 21 % since 2017, the year’s reference year.
Most of the CDC budget for HIV prevention is destined to support state and local health departments and community organizations in carrying out work on the ground against the epidemic. Many of these departments depend completely on these federal subsidies for their work in HIV, and experts claim that many smaller profit organizations could disappear without this financing.
According to an analysis published in April in the AIDS and Behavior magazine, to stop the HIV prevention efforts of the CDCs would increase, between 2025 and 2030, the total number of new cases of the virus in more than 213,300 and the number of deaths related to HIV in more than 10,600.
The study provides that the increase in medical expenses throughout the lives of these new cases would amount to 52.4 billion dollars, a cost that eclipses federal expenditure cuts proposed and that would probably fall greatly on taxpayers through Medicaid.
“End the HIV prevention efforts means that the epidemic will get worse, lives will be lost and not only will money save, but that additional medical costs will increase rapidly,” wrote the author of the study, David R. Holtgrave, main policy advisor of the Health Department of the State of New York.
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Anthony T. Fojo, HIV researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, pointed out what could suppose the loss of innumerable functions related to HIV that currently have the support of the financing of the CDC. These include HIV testing, identification of infection outbreaks, facilitation of derivations for HIV prevention and treatment medicines, and coordination of outbreak responses, such as the recent outbreak among drug users in Maine.
Republicans of the House of Representatives also intend to cut 525 million dollars, that is, 20 % of the Ryan White program budget, which covers the comprehensive care and treatment of people with low -income HIV. Fojo said that these cuts would compromise the results of HIV treatment of many people. Since a successful treatment eliminates the risk of transmission, it predicted that only this cut would increase the number of new infections by 12 % by 2030.
Dr. M. Chase Cates, medical director of Alamo Area Resource Center, a clinic financed by Ryan White in San Antonio, said: “If we lose that financing, we lose resources to help people with HIV, such as ensuring that they have access to medications that literally keep them alive and healthy.”
When asked about the budget cuts proposed for the prevention of HIV and the concerns of HIV experts and defenders, a health spokesman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said: “Secretary Kennedy remains firmly committed to a public health policy based on science.”
“Critical programs against HIV/AIDS, in particular, will continue under the administration for healthy United States,” added the spokesman.
