US funding cuts could reverse decades of gains in AIDS fight: UN
But now infections were likely to shoot up as funding cuts have shuttered prevention and treatment programmes, it said.
The United States has been the world's biggest donor of humanitarian assistance but President Donald Trump's abrupt slashing of international aid in February sent the global humanitarian community scrambling to keep life-saving operations afloat.
"We are proud of the achievements, but worried about this sudden disruption reversing the gains we have made," UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima told AFP ahead of the report's launch in Johannesburg.
The agency in April warned that a permanent discontinuation of PEPFAR, the massive US effort to fight HIV/AIDS, would lead to more than six million new infections and an additional 4.2 million AIDS-related deaths in the next four years.
This would bring the pandemic back to levels not seen since the early 2000s.
"This is not just a funding gap – it's a ticking time bomb" whose effects are already felt worldwide, Byanyima said in a press release.
Over 60 percent of all women-led HIV organisations surveyed by UNAIDS had lost funding or had to suspend services, the report said.
In a striking example, the number of people receiving pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drugs to prevent transmission in Nigeria fell by over 85 percent in the first few months of 2025.
The "story of how the world has come together" to fight HIV/AIDS is "one of the most important stories of progress in global health," Byanyima told AFP.
"But that great story has been disrupted massively" by Trump's "unprecedented" and "cruel" move, she said.
"Priorities can shift, but you do not take away life-saving support from people just like that," she said.
Key medical research affected
Crucial medical research on prevention and treatment have also shut down, including many in South Africa which has one of the highest HIV rates in the world and has become a leader in global research.
"Developing countries themselves contribute very much towards the research on HIV and AIDS, and that research serves the whole world," Byaniyma said.
In 25 out of 60 low- and middle-income countries surveyed by UNAIDS, governments had found ways to compensate part of the funding shortfall with domestic resources.
"We have to move towards nationally-owned and financed responses," Byaniyma said, calling for debt relief and the reform of international financial institutions to "free up the fiscal space for developing countries to pay for their own response".
Still, the global HIV response built from grassroots activism was "resilient by its very nature", she told AFP.
"We moved from people dying every single day to now a point where it is really like a chronic illness," she said.
© 2025 AFP
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Euronews
3 days ago
- Euronews
Global health donors cut aid to lowest level in 15 years, study finds
Global powers have been slashing their health spending in lower-income countries this year, causing health funding to be at its lowest level in 15 years, a new analysis has found. International health spending was already falling after the COVID-19 pandemic, but it plummeted in 2025, according to the report from the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Health aid to lower-income countries reached a record $80.3 billion (€68.6 billion) in 2021 and then steadily declined. This year, global health funding has plummeted to $38.4 billion (€32.8 billion), the lowest level since 2009. Under current trends, researchers expect it to fall another 8 per cent to about $36 billion (€30.8 billion) by 2030. These cuts could undermine years of progress combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, the researchers warned. It could also make it harder for people in lower-income countries to access pregnancy services and children's healthcare, and lead to worse water safety and food security. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be hardest hit by the aid cuts, with a 25 per cent drop since last year and another 7 per cent expected over the next five years. 'The drastic and abrupt reduction to [global health aid] could compromise the progress in health that has been achieved globally,' Dr Angela Apeagyei, the study's lead author and a research assistant professor at IHME, said in a statement. The decline is largely due to budget cuts from major donors, particularly the United States, which has traditionally been the world's top funder of global health. It plans to reduce its foreign assistance by 67 per cent this year compared with 2024, the estimates show. The estimates take into account additional planned cuts from the US, including a proposal to cancel previously approved money for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as well as US cuts to Gavi, the vaccine-sharing nonprofit, that were announced last month. The United Kingdom and Germany also made large cuts in 2025, redirecting spending to defence, while France reduced its global health funding over domestic concerns about how well the money was being used, the report noted. Not all wealthy countries are slashing health aid. This year, Australia, Japan, and South Korea increased their spending slightly, while aid from Canada, China, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) remained flat. But countries' pledges to boost health spending will not be enough to fill the gap left by the funding cuts, the researchers said.
France 24
5 days ago
- France 24
Nigeria's former president Buhari dead at 82
Current President Bola Tinubu said in a statement that his predecessor died in London at about 4:30 pm (1530 GMT) "following a prolonged illness". He did not disclose the nature of the illness. Buhari governed Nigeria with a strong hand as a military ruler in the 1980s before reinventing himself as a "converted democrat", serving two terms from 2015 to 2023. "The family of the former president has announced the passing on of the former president, Muhammadu Buhari, this afternoon in a clinic in London," Garba Shehu, who served as Buhari's spokesman during his presidency, said in a post on social media. Tinubu said he had spoken with Buhari's widow and ordered Vice President Kashim Shettima to go to England to accompany Buhari's body back to Nigeria. He also ordered flags to fly at half-staff in honour of Buhari, whose tenure was dogged by health rumours. His frequent visits for medical treatment during his presidency attracted criticism about the government's transparency over his illness and worries about leadership during some of his longer absences. Although the nature of his ailment has never been made public, Buhari confessed in one of the trips that he had "never been so ill" and that he had received several blood transfusions. Critics also said the visits highlighted the country's weak health system. 'A failure of leadership' Last week his aide Shehu launched a book, titled "According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson's Experience", in which according to local media he confessed to fabricating a 2017 story about rats' invasions at the presidential office, to shift Nigerians focus away from concerns over the leader's health. Buhari had spent nearly three months away receiving treatment in Britain. "When the surge in calls for explanation of why the president would be working from home, if truly he had recovered his health and fit for the office came, I said to the reporters that the office, which had been in disuse, needed renovation because rats may have eaten and damaged some cables," he wrote in the book, according to local media. The rake-thin 82-year-old Muslim from Nigeria's far north made history as the first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent leader at the ballot box in 2015. His election victory in a country where re-election for the incumbent had been taken for granted was seen as a rare opportunity for Nigeria to change course. But his time at the helm failed to halt the country's long-standing issues of graft and insecurity, while the oil giant was further dogged by economic woes. Despite concerns about his fragile health, his economic policies, the extent of his claims about better security, as well as the targets of his campaign against graft, he secured a second term in 2019. In a 2020 opinion piece for The New York Times, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie charged that his tenure in office had shown "a failure of leadership", writing that the "government of President Muhammadu Buhari has long been ineffectual, with a kind of wilful indifference." © 2025 AFP
France 24
11-07-2025
- France 24
Kidneys for cash: Inside Kenya's organ-trafficking network
For more than a decade, Kenya has quietly become a hub for an international organ trafficking network. Patients from countries including Germany, France, Israel and Russia have been travelling there, paying up to €200,000 to bypass long waiting lists for kidney transplants in their own countries. Many combine these life-saving procedures with luxury safaris, turning urgent medical treatment into an exclusive, high-end experience. At the heart of this trade is a now-suspended hospital accused of carrying out illegal operations. Behind it lies a network of brokers recruiting young, economically vulnerable Kenyan men. These donors often receive as little as €1,500 – a fraction of the sums paid by wealthy foreign patients – and many agree without fully understanding the serious, lifelong health risks involved. Caught between crushing poverty and the lure of quick money, they become pawns in a lucrative, yet brutal industry. Our reporters' investigation exposes the inner workings of this syndicate through interviews with victims, brokers, whistleblowers and officials. Their testimonies reveal a well-organised network that exploits economic desperation while catering to a global demand for organs. Yet those at the very top remain elusive, shielded from scrutiny by layers of secrecy and corruption. In response to growing concern, Kenyan authorities have recently launched multiple investigations and government crackdowns aimed at dismantling this illegal trade. However, past efforts have been criticised for lacking follow-through, with reports going unpublished and recommendations ignored. The continuing operation of the network raises urgent questions about medical ethics, law enforcement effectiveness and the protection of society's most vulnerable.
