Trump administration officials are putting forward new data that shows U.S. federal anti-HIV/AIDS funding has continued to curb the worldwide epidemic despite accusations from outside public health experts that the program was damaged when it was absorbed into the State Department last year.
The Trump administration released on Friday new data about the number of patients treated under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, from June to September 2025, the first report since the program moved from USAID to the State Department.
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Public health experts have warned since USAID was deconstructed last year that changes to PEPFAR would result in a rapid rise in HIV/AIDS worldwide, but the new data shows that the U.S. program under the State Department supported antiretroviral treatment for 20.6 million people living with HIV across 50 countries, which is the same as 2024 levels.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a Monday statement obtained by the Washington Examiner that the PEPFAR program is now “more effective, more efficient, and more strategic, all while costing taxpayers less.”
“The naysayers have once again been proven wrong,” Pigott said. “Under the Trump administration, PEPFAR is providing life-saving treatment to tens of millions of people, reducing cases, and containing the epidemic.”
Former President George W. Bush started the PEPFAR program in 2003. Since then, it is credited with saving roughly 26 million lives and has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress.
Congress rebuffed the Trump administration’s request to reduce PEPFAR funding and appropriated close to $6 billion for global HIV/AIDS work in its fiscal 2026 budget, keeping funding virtually the same as the year before.
But since the administration announced the start of a new global health strategy in September, numerous reports from providers and non-governmental organizations have noted that funding has come in fits and starts, making it difficult to sustain critical care operations.
There have also been allegations that the State Department is intentionally withholding funding allotments.
Trump administration officials, however, argue the program has been able to do more with less. The new data represents a new baseline since the State Department took over the program, officials said.
A press release on the data, published by the State Department on Monday, pushed back on public concern about the decline in the number of children being treated for HIV under PEPFAR, saying it is a positive development because fewer are getting HIV in the first place.
“What is misrepresented as a significant decline in the number of children on HIV treatment is actually a sign of the tremendous progress that has been made reducing the incidence of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and is consistent with historical trends,” the press release reads. “Over the past four years, the number of children on treatment has declined from 643,627 in 2022 to 508,703 in 2025—declines of 7%, 7%, and 9% over the past three years respectively.”
The State Department also said that the lower number of positive HIV tests during the last quarter of fiscal 2025 is “a sign of the progress that has been made battling the HIV epidemic and is consistent with historical trends.”
Lower numbers of positive HIV tests under the PEPFAR program also do not take into account the more than 3 million people who were transferred off U.S.-funded care and onto treatment plans from their national governments.
The program also more than doubled from last year its coverage of pre-exposure prophylaxis for pregnant and breastfeeding women, which the administration said “represents critical early progress toward President Trump’s goal of ending mother-to-child transmission of HIV.”
“In the coming months, we expect the data to show more lives saved per taxpayer dollar,” reads the press release. “The narrative will shift as our strategic approach demonstrates that ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic requires fewer taxpayer dollars—not more.”
