While the Trump administration's first official PEPFAR data release since 2024 shows HIV treatment numbers held relatively steady, Vox reports that independent analysis of unreleased quarterly data reveals deeper damage including 3.4 million fewer people tested, a 24% drop in frontline health workers, and a collapse of the prevention and outreach systems that kept the epidemic in check.

Despite cutting malaria deaths by 98% since 2011, Ghana faces a projected $1 billion funding gap through 2026 as cuts to U.S. foreign assistance reduce external support, with health officials warning that hard-won gains could unravel without sustained investment, DW reports.

After U.S. funding cuts gutted much of Zambia’s HIV prevention and community care system, clinics have lost the programs that once stopped infections before they spread, The New York Times reports.

The dismantling of USAID and the elimination of U.S. family planning funding have shuttered clinics, fired health workers, and caused contraceptive shortages across 41 recipient countries driving a surge in unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and maternal deaths.

The share of the global population facing food crises or worse has doubled over the past decade to nearly 23%, with 266 million people affected, according to The Independent. The U.S. drove three-quarters of a 23% decline in foreign aid from wealthy nations in 2025 — cutting its own contributions by 57% — leaving Germany as the world's largest donor.

PEPFAR's chief science officer resigned after publicly criticizing the Trump administration for using HIV aid as leverage over developing countries, Reuters reports.

According to NPR, the Trump administration's overhaul of U.S. foreign aid has disrupted HIV care delivery under PEPFAR — the program credited with saving 26 million lives since 2003 — leaving health workers uncertain about the program's future.

In a new book, former USAID official Nicholas Enrich provides a firsthand account of DOGE's dismantling of the agency, describing how unqualified operatives tore apart decades of global health and development expertise, The Guardian reports.

Despite steady overall treatment numbers, U.S. funding disruptions have sharply reduced HIV testing and prevention efforts under PEPFAR, raising concerns that undetected infections and future cases could surge, Reuters reports.

Robert Rotberg argues that the Trump administration's cuts to USAID and PEPFAR have been devastating for sub-Saharan Africa.

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, warns that aid cuts are stoking global economic instability amid the Iran war, noting that $40 billion has already been stripped from the world's poorest populations.

As part of its broader dismantling of traditional U.S. foreign assistance, the Trump administration is pushing U.N. member states to endorse a "Trade Over Aid Initiative" that promotes free-market reforms over donor-funded development, the AP reports.

New foreign assistance contracts and awards have plummeted 86% in number since the shuttering of USAID, with the few large agreements that remain flowing overwhelmingly to international organizations rather than to U.S. firms and nonprofits, according to the Center for Global Development.

Despite a landmark 2018 U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the deliberate starvation of civilians, food continues to be weaponized with near impunity, argues David Beasley, former World Food Programme director.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah warns that if the current trajectory holds, the cuts to Overseas Direct Assistance could result in more than 9 million preventable deaths by 2030.

DW reports that the Trump administration is pressuring Zambia to sign a bilateral health deal that would tie continued HIV treatment funding — relied on by 1.3 million people — to demands for access to the country's critical mineral reserves.

Global aid from OECD countries fell 23.1% in 2025 — the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance, with the destruction of U.S. foreign aid programs accounting for three quarters of the global decline.

A new Carnegie Endowment report finds that the termination of U.S. foreign assistance to independent media has gutted newsrooms, emboldened autocratic government crackdowns, and opened the door for Russian and Chinese influence to fill the vacuum.

The Trump administration's shuttering of USAID — which had injected roughly $200 million annually into Ethiopia's health care system — has left pregnant women paying out of pocket for ultrasounds, prenatal vitamins, and delivery room supplies that were once free, threatening to reverse decades of progress on maternal mortality, The Globe and Mail reports.

As the Trump administration's gutting of U.S. foreign aid sparks debate over America's diminishing global influence, NPR speaks with soft power scholars around the world to explain what the concept means — and what is at stake when aid dollars, once a tool for winning hearts and minds, disappear.