“We come to Rio de Janeiro at a moment of real danger for the HIV response,” Beatriz Grinsztejn, IAS President and AIDS 2026 International Co-Chair, said. The report also found that in 2025, there were 1.2 million new HIV acquisitions and 570,000 AIDS-related deaths as the world fell short of its global AIDS targets. Taken together, the two reports show a global HIV response under more severe strain than at any point since the funding scale-up began in 2002. “At the same time, no country can replace the scale of international partnership that has driven the global HIV response for decades. “The world has made extraordinary progress against HIV,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said.