This week, President Donald Trump signed into law a $5.9 billion spending package aimed at supporting the global response to HIV/AIDS and global public health. The signing of the appropriations bill was hailed by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as providing life-saving support for millions of people across the globe.
“I thank President Trump and the US Congress for their continued commitment to HIV and global health,” UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, MS, said in a press release. The investment will “help to ensure that the global HIV response remains efficient, data-driven and delivers results.”
The bill allocates $4.6 billion for HIV support through the America First Global Health Strategy; $1.3 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and $45 million directly to UNAIDS.
Debate about US role in global health funding
US investment has been central to decades of progress in combating HIV/AIDS across the globe, according to UNAIDS, and the 2026 investment will help advance UNAIDS’ goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. The United States has partnered with UNAIDS since its founding in 1996, and it recently renewed its membership in the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board through 2028.
More than 50 skuas (gull relatives) died of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu in 2023 and 2024 in Antarctica, the first documented wildlife die-off from the virus on that continent, per an Erasmus University–led study published in Scientific Reports.
The researchers describe the deaths, which occurred in the summers of 2023 and 2024 in a skua breeding colony at one of 10 sites in Antarctica they visited as part of a research expedition in March 2024. Skuas are scavenging seabirds that live primarily in polar and subpolar regions.
The team surveyed wildlife at the South Shetland Islands, northern Weddell Sea, and Antarctic Peninsula, collecting tissue samples, performing post-mortem exams, and gathering environmental samples.
While H5N1 has been circulating in Antarctica since 2023, “this is the first study to show they died of the viral infection,” co-senior author Ralph Vanstreels, DVM, PhD, of the University of California Davis, said in a university news release.
‘If nobody is watching, we won’t know what is happening’
H5N1 was detected at three sites and diagnosed as the cause of death of nearly all dead skuas at Beak Island. The birds rapidly died of multi-organ necrosis (tissue death). The virus didn’t kill other examined species such as penguins or fur seals.
