The sudden drop in funding is hitting the HIV response “like a shockwave”, said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, adding that “the world is going backwards just when we need to be moving forward”.
Many countries are not prepared to support programs previously supported by international funding, Ms Byanyima told reporters at UN headquarters in New York, noting that prevention and support services are already collapsing in several countries.
Today, 9.3 million people living with HIV are still waiting to start treatment, while there will be 1.3 million new infections worldwide in 2024.
“Real consequences”
Ms Byanyima warned that the funding crisis is having “real consequences” in developing countries, as treatment expansion stalls and community organizations – often the backbone of the HIV response – are forced to scale back their activities or close their doors entirely.
In Uganda, the use of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), which can reduce the risk of contracting HIV through sexual transmission by up to 99 percent, fell by 31 percent between December 2024 and September 2025.
In Burundi, participation fell by 64 percent during the same period.
Even basic prevention tools are becoming less and less accessible. In Nigeria, condom distribution fell by 55 percent between December 2024 and March 2025.
Funding shocks
Charities and groups working on HIV/AIDS are increasingly strained by funding cuts, with many scaling back their activities or closing their doors altogether.
In eight countries where UNAIDS operates, 99.9 percent of HIV prevention services are externally funded, with only 0.1 percent funded domestically, making programs highly vulnerable to aid cuts.
“The budgetary constraints of the hardest-hit countries are enormous,” said Ms. Byanyima.
By 2024, approximately 570 girls and young women were infected with HIV every day. Yet 60 percent of women-led HIV organizations have lost funding or closed their doors completely.
The most vulnerable caught in “proxy wars”
“These are proxy wars for essential minerals, for energy, for influence that are being waged, exploiting the rights of the most marginalized people,” said Ms. Byanyima.
In Kenya, most shelters serving key populations, including LGBTQ communities, have closed. Nigeria has lost at least five similar clinics.
In Uganda, 45 percent of programs supporting key populations have been partially or completely disrupted. In Zimbabwe, services for sex workers – including access to prevention, testing and treatment – completely collapsed by 2025.
Science offers solutions
Despite these setbacks, Ms. Byanyima stressed that scientific advances still offer a path to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
“Science is giving us solutions that could end this epidemic by 2030: long-acting PrEP, long-acting prevention, long-acting treatments, drugs that we wouldn’t have thought of 10 years ago. It’s all there,” she said.
But she warned that brutal budget cuts, combined with growing opposition to human rights, are moving the world further away from that goal.
