The White House is preparing a formal request to Congress to cut $9 billion of previously approved funds.
Donald Trump's administration is advancing major efforts to continue cutting US foreign aid
and dismantling USAID.
A draft Fiscal
Year 2026 budget proposes cutting the State Department by nearly 50%—over $30
billion—with foreign aid reduced by up to 75%, including the closure of at
least 27 US diplomatic missions, primarily in Africa and Europe.
At the same
time, the White House is preparing a formal request to Congress to cut $9
billion of previously approved funds. The cuts according to a health activist groups
are aimed at USAID, State Department and public broadcasting programs.
The U.S. has been the
largest donor
government to global health and has
prioritized
health within its foreign assistance activities to a greater degree than other donor
governments.
A KFF analysis.
KFF is the
independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
It found that 80% of global health awards are listed as
terminated, totaling $12.7 billion in unobligated funding. Of the 770
global health awards identified, 615 (80%) are listed as terminated, slightly
below the share of all awards terminated (86%).
These terminated awards include
support for polio vaccination programs, activities aimed at improving maternal
and child health (MCH), efforts to strengthen infectious disease detection
systems around the world, HIV treatment projects, family planning support, and
more.
Collectively, terminated health awards total $12.7 billion in unobligated
funding, or 67% of unobligated funding for global health ($19.1 billion). The
remaining 155 global health awards remain active, totaling $6.3 billion, or
33%, of the global health unobligated funding total.
The analysis
whose findings were released this week examined the implications of the cuts,
and among other assessments, found HIV-related programs are disproportionately
impacted.
USAID through PEPFAR
has been the leading funder to Uganda’s HIV/AIDS programming. It was acclaimed for
the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission PMTCT) thereby saving lives
thousand of children who would have been born with the HIV virus.
KFF says since
the start of his second term, President Trump has taken numerous actions
impacting U.S. global health efforts including
pausing
foreign aid while conducting of review of existing programs, elimination of
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which manages the
majority
of U.S. global health funding, and signing several
executive
actions placing restrictions on U.S. global health activities.
These efforts it
said have significant
implications
for existing U.S. programs and left
large
gaps in the donor landscape.
If enacted,
these cuts would deliver a major blow to US global health and development
leadership, severely undermining programs focused on HIV and disease
prevention, and further accelerating the administration’s efforts to dismantle
USAID.
AIDS Vaccines
Advocacy Coalition’s (AVAC) Executive Director, Mitchell Warren said in
Science, “We are in the middle of
a massive earthquake. And when buildings fall, we can’t just build back what we
had before. We need a whole new global health funding architecture, but we
won’t be able to build it fast enough to avoid significant harm.
The suspension of all U.S. foreign assistance following President
Trump’s Executive Order in January 2025 had a devastating impact to many local and international organizations in areas of human rights, health, journalists, media
outlets, digital rights advocates – worldwide
