• Posted April 9, 2025

Key HIV Care Teams Let Go, Putting Mothers and Children at Risk

The Trump administration has let go of the last remaining U.S. health officials who oversaw HIV care for more than 1.1 million mothers and children in low-income countries.

The move raises alarms about how these vulnerable groups will get care.

The officials — who worked in multiple U.S. agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — managed programs funded through the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

These efforts help prevent HIV transmission from mothers to babies and treat children who are already infected. But those teams were eliminated last week during an abrupt reorganization.

“We hope this is not a sign that treating mothers and children is no longer important in PEPFAR, and that this is a mistake that can be corrected,” a federal health official who asked not to be named, told The New York Times.

Though PEPFAR funding still exists, there’s now a shortage of staff to run the programs, The Times said.

It’s unclear how the money will be used without the experts who oversaw 300 grants across more than 40 countries.

"We were totally blindsided that the whole unit at CDC is being terminated," said Dr. Anja Giphart, executive vice president of medical and scientific affairs at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Her group relies on the CDC for 60% of its funding and only has money promised through September.

According to a study published Tuesday in The Lancet, cutting off PEPFAR support could lead to 1 million new HIV infections and nearly 500,000 AIDS-related deaths in children by 2030.

In places like sub-Saharan Africa, one child under age 15 dies from AIDS every seven minutes, The Times reported.

What's more, pregnant women with HIV often get treatment at prenatal clinics, which lowers the risk of infecting their babies from 1 in 3 to less than 1%, according to National Institutes of Health data.

CDC staff had been helping countries plan for new HIV drug deliveries and tracking medicine shortages caused by the January foreign aid freeze. Now, that coordination has disappeared.

“This coordination is especially critical right now because we’re in a period of immense change,” the anonymous CDC official said.

"Time is of the essence,” Giphart agreed. “That seems to not really be taken into consideration with all these changes that are being made.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more HIV data.

SOURCE: The New York Times, April 8, 2025