State Department says U.S. won't mark World AIDS Day this year

by · UPI

Nov. 27 (UPI) -- The federal government will not participate in this year's World AIDS Day, a decades-old event to mourn people who've died from the disease and raise awareness.

The State Department has directed employees and grant recipients not to use federal funding to commemorate the day, The New York Times reported Wednesday. While employees can still highlight their work on AIDS and other diseases, they should "refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day" in public-facing messaging, the Times reported.

"An awareness day is not a strategy," Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the department, told the paper. "Under the leadership of President Trump, the State Department is working directly with foreign governments to save lives and increase their responsibility and burden sharing."

However, the Trump White House has issued other proclamations for commemorative days intended to raise awareness about autism, organ donation, cancer and others.

Related

World AIDS Day has been observed every Dec. 1 since 1988. President Bill Clinton became the first U.S. head of state in 1993 to issue a proclamation on the deadly immune-deficiency disease.

The Trump administration froze foreign aid spending earlier this year. With the approval of Congress, it later slashed about $7.9 billion in international humanitarian aid programs. However, the cuts left funding intact programs that combat HIV and AIDS, as well as other infectious diseases.

An estimated 40.8 million people were living with HIV, the precursor to AIDS, worldwide in 2024, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 1.3 million people acquired HIV last year.

However, the United Nations' program on AIDS warned on Tuesday of international funding cuts and a waning resolve to address the virus.

A report from the U.N. program noted that some funding has been restored for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative started under George W. Bush that is credited with saving more than 25 million lives. However, the report stated that "service disruptions associated with these and other funding cuts are having long-lasting effects on almost all areas of the HIV response."

"The funding crisis has exposed the fragility of the progress we fought so hard to achieve," Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, said in a statement. "Behind every data point in this report are people-babies and children missed for HIV screening or early HIV diagnosis, young women cut off from prevention support, and communities suddenly left without services and care. We cannot abandon them."