Decades of gains in the fight 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.

The executive director of Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, Winnie Byanyima, warned in New York that the sudden funding decline was hitting the HIV response “like a shock wave”.

Ms Byanyima added, “The world is pulling back just when we need to push forward.”

Many countries are unprepared to sustain programmes previously supported by international funding, Byanyima said, noting that prevention and support services are already collapsing in several countries.

Today, 9.3 million people living with HIV are still waiting to begin treatment, while there were 1.3 million new infections worldwide in 2024.

Mr Byanyima warned that the funding crisis was having “real consequences” across developing countries as treatment expansion stalled and community organisations were forced to scale back or close entirely.

UNAIDS said in Nigeria, condom distribution dropped by 55 per cent between December 2024 and March 2025.

The UN agency said charities and groups working on HIV/AIDS were increasingly strained by funding cuts, with many reducing operations or shutting down altogether.

In 2024, around 570 girls and young women were infected with HIV every day. In spite of that, the agency said 60 per cent of women-led HIV organizations have either lost funding or shut down completely.

UNAIDS regretted that Nigeria had lost at least five similar clinics.

In spite of the setbacks, Ms 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, were pulling the world further away from that goal.

(NAN)