AI Insight
Global health has achieved significant progress in vaccination, child survival, and HIV response, but the systems that enabled these gains were built during an era of different power dynamics and are now facing severe disruption. Development assistance for health decreased by an estimated 21% between 2024 and 2025, with the USA's withdrawal from WHO and dismantling of USAID contributing to the unraveling of progress in HIV treatment, maternal health, and women's health services. The field is experiencing a fundamental crisis as donor countries retreat and redirect funding toward defense spending.
Why it matters
The rapid decline in global health funding and institutional support threatens to reverse decades of progress in disease prevention and treatment, potentially affecting millions of people in low and middle-income countries who depend on international health assistance. The structural changes signal a shift away from multilateral cooperation in health, with immediate consequences for ongoing programs addressing HIV, maternal mortality, and reproductive health services.
Understand the Science
Global health has delivered historic gains in vaccination, child survival, and the HIV response, but the architecture behind these achievements was shaped by the power asymmetries of a different era. The field of global health is now in rupture. Development assistance for health decreased by an estimated 21% between 2024 and 2025.1 The USA’s withdrawal from WHO and the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, amplified by wider donor retreat and budgets diverted towards defence, are unravelling hard-won gains on HIV, maternal health, and services for women and girls.
Source: [Comment] Global health reform is missing a generation