\n Although the US government said last September that HIV services to prevent mother-to-child transmission would be prioritized<\/a> and protected from funding cuts, the amfAR survey found that 63% of respondents reported disruptions to those services.\n <\/p>\n \n That includes 22% of surveyed organizations that said they ended those mother-to-child prevention services entirely amid the funding cuts.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEven if the administration\u2019s intention was to not touch these programs, PEPFAR (funding) awards generally aren\u2019t sort of specific to doing one individual task,\u201d said Elise Lankiewicz, a senior policy associate at amfAR. \u201cThere was really no way to protect very singular parts of the system while dismantling others.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n It comes as 1,714 health clinics once supported by PEPFAR closed last year around the world, according to the organizations surveyed.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019m not so worried in terms of supplies and medications, but I\u2019m super worried about the quality of care for the children, for the mothers,\u201d said Masenge, now the president of the Paediatric Association of Tanzania, regarding the situation in her area. \u201cPeople are not going back to the facility to pick up their medication because they feel like the services have really become worse, and the early infant diagnosis is suffering similarly.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n PEPFAR, which was established by the George W. Bush administration in 2003, is credited with saving more than 26 million lives and preventing millions of infections, mostly in Africa, according to the World Health Organization and the program\u2019s own data. It\u2019s one of the US government\u2019s hallmark global health programs that is now experiencing significant funding cuts, as the administration transitions to a strategy of striking new agreements with aid-recipient nations and demanding more co-financing from them<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n A US State Department spokesperson told CNN that the amfAR survey has \u201cflawed\u201d methodology and said that \u201cthe Trump Administration has strengthened PEPFAR through clear strategic direction, promoting greater recipient-country ownership, and sharpening the program\u2019s focus on measurable health outcomes. As a result, the number of children testing positive and on treatment for HIV has continued to decline.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n While it\u2019s true that the number of children starting new HIV treatment fell last year, experts say that\u2019s not necessarily a marker of success. Declines in the number of children being tested and monitored for HIV indicate that children are losing access to care<\/a> and falling through the cracks, according to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation. Meanwhile, disruptions to data gathering and reporting have made it more difficult to spot negative outcomes.\n <\/p>\n \n The State Department spokesperson added: \u201cToday, we are focusing on real outcomes: fewer new infections, mature programs transitioning to local management, and countries advancing toward long-term self-reliance \u2026 FY2025 Q4 data show that as of September 30, 2025, the U.S. government supported lifesaving HIV treatment for 20.6 million people living with HIV in more than 50 countries.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation has called the drops in pediatric diagnosis and treatment an \u201cHIV crisis hiding in plain sight.\u201d<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEvery single indicator in the pediatric HIV cascade shows decline,\u201d the foundation said. Its president, Dr. Doris Macharia, added: \u201cWhere the (PEPFAR) program reaches children, it works. But the data tell us that far fewer are now being reached.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Despite US government carve-outs for \u201clife-saving\u201d work to continue in relation to pregnant and breastfeeding women, amfAR\u2019s analysis<\/a> of the latest US government data found that HIV testing for pregnant women declined slightly, by 2%, at the end of 2025 compared with the same time period a year before. Testing for babies declined further, by at least 6%, although some health facilities reported far worse metrics for infant testing.\n <\/p>\n \n Meanwhile, respondents to the amfAR survey reported that the Orphans and Vulnerable Children Program, aimed at helping high-risk children access HIV care and other general health services, has also been severely disrupted. KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, found that the number of children and family members served by that program fell by about 4.8 million in 2025 compared with the year before.\n <\/p>\n \n Another recent analysis<\/a> by the Clinton Health Access Initiative found that the number of children getting on medications used to treat HIV declined 15% in 2025 compared with the year before across eight countries that it studied. The organization said that reflects the negative impacts of HIV test kit shortages, as well as \u201congoing integration of pediatric HIV services into general health facilities without adequate provider training and support.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Beyond medications and basic care, PEPFAR once provided many \u201cwraparound services\u201d designed to prevent infections, encourage marginalized people to come to clinics and keep people from falling off their treatment plans, according to HIV\/AIDS experts who spoke to CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI would expect those are the first things that are going to drop off, especially in countries with limited funds to replace what\u2019s been lost from PEPFAR,\u201d amfAR\u2019s Lankiewicz said.\n <\/p>\n \n When it comes to preventing mother-to-child transmission, those wraparound services include things like paying community health care workers to follow up with mothers about scheduling appointments or providing community education about how HIV can be transmitted to babies. What is preserved will depend on the ability of each country\u2019s government to upkeep and pay for services, experts said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cOn top of that, then we have this issue with money not flowing. So even though PEPFAR received the regular amount of appropriations from Congress in the last year, that money is not actually moving,\u201d Lankiewicz added.\n <\/p>\n \n CNN has previously reported on the Trump administration underspending roughly $1.7 billion that Congress has already approved for the flagship HIV\/AIDS program, as well as redirecting $2 billion in funding intended for global health programs<\/a> to cover the cost of closing USAID.\n <\/p>\n \n Changes to the implementation of PEPFAR and spending cuts have affected not only health services but also data collection.\n <\/p>\n \n PEPFAR\u2019s robust data collection was once a valuable resource for researchers and health care providers around the world. But the Trump administration has stopped releasing the program\u2019s quarterly reports and withheld some of the data.\n <\/p>\n \n The State Department said earlier this year that the US government had \u201cgreater confidence in data\u201d from the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 but added that \u201cearlier quarters experienced reporting and implementation challenges which limit data interpretability.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Experts warn that the data upheaval makes it harder to see the full picture of health service disruptions and final outcomes.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYou don\u2019t always see the impact on outcomes till it\u2019s too late,\u201d said Jennifer Kates, director of global and public health policy at KFF. \u201cAnd that would be a crisis, if we get to a point in a year or so where we look back and say more babies died and more children were born with HIV.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For example, the US government has suggested that declines in the number of children being treated for HIV indicate that programs to prevent infections in the first place are working. But the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation has said<\/a> that \u201cdoes not explain such a dramatic and sudden drop of 54,000 children already on treatment.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n When it comes to the decline in the number of infants being tested for HIV, Kates said, it could lead to researchers and program-implementers being in the dark.\n <\/p>\n \n She asked, \u201cIf there\u2019s not as much detection going on, are we going to even know what is happening for babies?\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Theopista Masenge was at the hospital in Mbeya, Tanzania, rolling out new treatments for children with high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":911332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-911331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/911332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/dsc-8629-copy.jpg\")
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