New York: UNAIDS warned that global HIV prevention is facing its worst setback in decades, driven by a 90% plummet in condom funding in some of the hardest-hit countries.
Delivering a stark assessment of the global response in New York on Tuesday, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima revealed that critical disruptions are jeopardising years of progress.
“HIV testing has fallen 22% in high-burden settings, meaning that people don’t know their status and the virus continues to spread,” Byanyima said.
In addition to the crippling 90% reduction in condom financing in certain regions, Byanyima noted that global resources are drying up across the board. “Prevention is being dismantled at the very moment we should be scaling innovations like new long-acting medicines,” she cautioned. “According to the OECD, development finance fell 23% in 2025—the sharpest drop on record.”
The executive director warned that HIV programs in low-income, high-burden countries are bearing the brunt of these austerity measures, noting that recent UNAIDS data underscores the extreme fragility of the current response.
Fragile Progress Under Threat
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed echoed these concerns, warning that progress against the epidemic is stalling just as shrinking international support and mounting financial pressures threaten to reverse decades of hard-won gains.
Mohammed reflected on the historic achievements born from global cooperation since the epidemic began.
“In the 45 years since the first case of AIDS was reported, the world has demonstrated uncommon resolve and solidarity,” Mohammed said. “That effort helped reduce AIDS-related deaths by 70% since their peak in 2004 and brought lifesaving antiretroviral treatment to more than 32 million people worldwide.”
However, she emphasised that these achievements remain dangerously uneven. According to UN data, by the end of 2024, an estimated 9.2 million people worldwide still lacked access to essential HIV treatment. In that same year, 1.3 million people contracted the virus, and 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses.
“Funding cuts are directly affecting prevention efforts and the community systems that are so essential to the response,” Mohammed stated.
A Call for Action
The Deputy Secretary-General called for immediate, renewed international action centred on five key priority areas:
Expanding access to prevention and treatment
Strengthening community leadership
Protecting human rights
Increasing sustainable financing
Reviving international cooperation
“Human rights and equality must continue to guide our response,” Mohammed urged, warning that stigma, discrimination, and shrinking civic spaces continue to place vulnerable lives at risk.
As the session concluded, global speakers urged governments to recommit to the target of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. They called for the urgent adoption of a new Political Declaration to strategically guide and finance the global response over the next five years.