Decades of progress against AIDS are under growing threat as donor funding declines and community-based health services collapse in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, according to a press release by UNAIDS. Speaking to reporters at United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York on Thursday, Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, warned that the sudden funding decline is hitting the HIV response “like a shock wave.” She added that “the world is pulling back just when we need to push forward.” Many countries are unprepared to sustain programmes previously supported by international funding. Prevention and support services are already collapsing in several countries.
Today, 9.3 million people living with HIV are still waiting to begin treatment. Worldwide, there were 1.3 million new infections in 2024. In 2024, around 570 girls and young women were infected with HIV every day. Yet 60 per cent of women-led HIV organizations have either lost funding or shut down completely. In eight countries where UNAIDS operates, 99.9 per cent of HIV prevention services are funded externally, with only 0.1 per cent financed domestically.
Real consequences across countries
Byanyima warned that the funding crisis is having “real consequences” as treatment expansion stalls and community organizations are forced to scale back or close entirely. In Uganda, uptake of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), which can reduce the risk of acquiring HIV through sexual transmission by up to 99 per cent, fell by 31 per cent between December 2024 and September 2025. In Burundi, uptake fell by 64 per cent over the same period. In Nigeria, condom distribution dropped by 55 per cent between December 2024 and March 2025. Charities and groups working on HIV/AIDS are increasingly strained by funding cuts.
In Kenya, most drop-in centres serving key populations, including LGBTQ communities, have closed, while Nigeria has lost at least five similar clinics. In Uganda, 45 per cent of programmes supporting key populations have partially or fully shut down. In Zimbabwe, services for sex workers – including access to prevention, testing and treatment – have collapsed entirely in 2025. “It is proxy wars for critical minerals, for energy, for influence that are being fought, instrumentalising the rights of the most marginalised people,” Byanyima said. “The fiscal constraints of the most heavily burdened countries are huge,” she added.
Science offering solutions
Despite the setbacks, Byanyima stressed that scientific advances still offer a pathway to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. “Science is offering us solutions that could end this epidemic by 2030; long-acting PrEP, long-acting prevention, long-acting treatments, medicines that we would not have thought about 10 years ago. All these are there,” she said. However, she warned that abrupt funding cuts, combined with growing pushback against human rights, are pulling the world further away from that goal. The shock to funding flows is compounding pressures on already stretched national systems. The path forward, she indicated, depends on sustaining both resources and rights.
