CROI 2025: Delegates send open letter to protest US cuts

12 March 2025. Related: Conference reports, Treatment advocacy, .

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

During CROI 2025 more than 500 delegates, including many on the CROI Organising Committee, co-signed an open letter to protest US cuts to international aid.

Open letter to Secretary Rubio

As HIV doctors, researchers, scientists, and public health experts gather at the 2025 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), writing in our individual capacities, we call for an urgent reversal of recent decisions by the Trump Administration that are doing catastrophic harm to the global and US. response to the AIDS pandemic.

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has been among the world’s most successful public health efforts, saving more than 26 million lives in 55 countries. Unless reversed, the dismantling of the US-supported AIDS response will cause the deaths of an estimated six million people in the next four years, decades of progress will be reversed, and the world will face growing HIV epidemics across the globe.

We are deeply alarmed by:

  • The stop-work order on January 24 interrupting HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other US-funded global health programs, with no continuity for life-saving programs other than an opaque and dysfunctional waiver process. This has resulted in chaos and service disruptions across PEPFAR-supported programs.
  • The termination on February 26 of 90% of USAID’s foreign aid programs, virtually eliminating all of PEPFAR programming being implemented by USAID, and ending US malaria and tuberculosis programs. If not reversed, this decision will result in millions of preventable deaths around the world while decimating global progress over the last 25 years. 
  • The dismantling of USAID, contrary to US law, and the freezing of USAID’s payment system, wiping out critical human and physical infrastructure needed to stand up global health programs implemented through U.S. bilateral funding.
  • Halting global clinical trials leaving study participants stranded without clinical support the US government as a trial sponsor is obligated to provide.
  • Stripping scientific research institutions and agencies of the funding, personnel, political independence, transparency, and freedom to communicate required to end this epidemic and advance science for the public good.
  • Dismantling U.S.-funded efforts to train, attract, and retain scientists and clinicians who are underrepresented in our disciplines.
  • Undermining efforts to improve representation in clinical trials and in service provision of people with elevated risk of HIV acquisition and poor clinical outcomes from HIV, such as transgender people.  

Over time, these policy decisions may be proven illegal in US courts but the human suffering and loss of lives happening now cannot be reversed by any court order.

We call on you to immediately restart all PEPFAR and global health foreign assistance and reverse these profoundly misguided policies.

END

Reference

Open Letter to Secretary Rubio on the Dismantling of US Global AIDS Programme. Full letter including signatories.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13dahjF1VeES-wOZTSXwrgdjOD_RguTVuF0YEO8lOUSE/edit?tab=t.0

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