In his discourse on the state of the 2019 Union, President Donald Trump is committed to stimulating HIV spending, with the high objective of bringing the nation epidemic to the heel by 2030. Last year, this federal initiative, ending the HIV epidemic, has demonstrated progress.
This year, however, the Republicans are looking for deep cuts to prevention of HIV and the financing of treatment. The Trump administration proposed in its budget request in 2026 to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention division, and the Républicains of the Chamber are looking for nearly $ 2 billion in HIV -related discounts in their federal health expenditure bill. The Senate, on the other hand, proposes to maintain the financing of HIV essentially at the current levels in its corresponding proposal.
To become a law, any financing bill must adopt the two chambers of the congress, which would require the support of at least certain Democrats in the Senate, and would benefit from the support of Trump.
But although these are only proposals at this stage, they reflect where many Republicans – who control the White House and the two chambers of the Congress – are held on the issue and would cause spectacular divestment in funding which has often received bipartite support.
“Donald Trump and the House Republicans reduce bone rescue programs so that they can give tax alleviation to billionaires and large companies,” said senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Who co-written the Bipartite Handy expenses bill in the Senate.
Neither the White House nor the office of the Chamber, Mike Johnson, R-La., Responded to requests for comments.
After decades to benefit from solid federal funding, a large part of Bipartisan IT, HIV defenders have seen that the current Trump administration has targeted prevention and treatment efforts for disease with steep cuts, including radical terminations of national research subsidies of the National Institutes of Health and international aid.
However, leadership at the National Institute of Infectious Allergies and Diseases, a NIH division, heard an optimistic speech by the director of NIH on Thursday, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. In his recorded speech, Bhattacharya listed as an absolute priority achieving the objectives of the end of the epidemic HIV program.
“We now have in our capacity the ability to put an end to the HIV epidemic by 2030, to reduce the transmission of HIV at very, very low levels. And we just need to understand how to do it,” he said.
Bhattacharya notably pointed out the recent approval of Yeztugo, an injectable form with prolonged action of HIV drugs, or PREP, that everything except the risk of HIV in clinical trials, and he promised research on the NIH on the best way to unroll Yeztugo as well as to improve the treatment rate of national HIV. However, he did not mention the radical cancellation by the Trump Administration of existing Subsidies of Research on HIV prevention earlier this year or the efforts of the Republicans of the White House and the Chamber to empty the end of the HIV epidemic program and the HIV prevention work of the CDC.
In response to the question of NBC News on the apparent contradiction between his address and the objectives and actions of the Trump administration and the Republicans of the Chamber, Bhattacharya replied in a text message: “There is no contradiction. The science of implementation, which the NIH will lead. »»
HIV defenders said they are concerned about the fact that the Destabilization that the Trump administration had brought to the fields of HIV prevention and research will dull the impact of Yeztugo.
HIV policy experts expressed cautious optimism that the Senate financing bill would prevail, although they have declared that mood among them remains dark.
“People are devastated,” said Drew Gibson, advocacy director at Aids United. “But we are not going to sit down and accept it as fate.”
Even if the flat funding of the Senate prevails, the concern persists among the defenders of HIV as the management and budget office of Trump, as it did in other circumstances, to distribute funds, the congress has attributed to fight against the virus.
Kathleen Ethier, who left the CDC in early January and whose long term included time in the MST prevention division, said that the Trump administration’s actions concerning the adjacent HIV division, including mass layoffs and then reintegration, had already compromised the HIV prevention mission.
“All those to whom I have spoken who are still inside the CDC are afraid for their work, demoralized by leadership, unable to do a lot of work,” she said.
Ernest Hopkins, a veteran strategist for the San Francisco Aids Foundation policy, said that, in the departure of tradition, the OMB had prevented HIV lobbyists like him from meeting them during this budgetary cycle.
The elimination of the CDC HIV budget, which the House bill proposes, “would have an absolutely disastrous impact,” said Hopkins. “We would see a significant increase in HIV infections at all levels.”
The OMB did not respond to a request for comments.
Last year, the CDC estimated that from 2018 to 2022, annual HIV transmissions decreased by 12%, to 31,800. (No updated estimate was issued this year due to layoffs among the staff who carry out these calculations.) In particular, in the 48 counties of Spot Hot and other jurisdictions targeted by the end of the financing of the HIV epidemic, the cases decreased by around 21% Since the reference year of the 2017 program.
The share of the Lion of the HIV prevention budget of the CDC will support health departments and local community organizations and community organizations to carry out work on the ground against the epidemic. Many of these departments depend entirely on these federal subsidies for their HIV work, and the experts have declared that many small non -profit organizations could bend in the absence of this funding.
According to an analysis published in April in the journal Aids and Behavior, the cessation of HIV prevention efforts of the CDC, from 2025 to 2030, would increase the total number of new cases of viruses by more than 213,300 and the number of deaths related to HIV by more than 10,600.
The increase in life medical fees of these new cases, projected by the study, would be $ 52.4 billion – a cost that eclipses the proposed federal expenditure reductions and which would probably be considerably supported by taxpayers through Medicaid.
“The end of HIV prevention efforts means that the epidemic will get worse, the lives will be lost, and not only will not only be saved, but the additional medical costs will be increased quickly,” wrote the study author, David R. Holtgrave, senior policy advisor to the Department of Health of New York State.
Dr. Anthony T. Fojo, a researcher at HIV at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said what could be the loss of a myriad of HIV -related functions currently supported by CDC funding. This includes the supply of HIV tests; Identify infection clusters; Facilitate references for HIV drugs and for the treatment of HIV; And coordinate epidemic responses, as for the recent large cluster among the Maine’s drug addicts.
House Republicans are also looking to reduce $ 525 million, or 20%, from the Ryan White program budget, which covers complete care and treatment for low -income living people. Fojo said these cuts would compromise the results of the treatment of HIV for many people. Since successful treatment eliminates the risk of transmission, it has projected that this reduction alone 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 this funding, we lose resources to help those who live HIV, as they ensure that they have access to their drugs that literally keep them alive and healthy.”
Asked about the budget cuts proposed by HIV and the concerns of HIV experts and defenders, a health spokesman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“HIV / AIDS critical programs, in particular, will continue under the administration for a healthy America,” added the spokesperson.
