The sudden decline in funding is hitting the HIV response “like a shock wave,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, adding that “the world is going backwards just when we need to move forward.”
Many countries are not prepared to sustain programs that previously received international funding, Byanyima told reporters at United Nations 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 1.3 million new infections will occur worldwide in 2024.
‘Real consequences’
Byanyima warned that the funding crisis is having “real consequences” across developing countries, as treatment expansion stalls and community-based organizations – often the backbone of the HIV response – are forced to scale back or close 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, utilization fell by 64 percent during the same period.
Even basic prevention tools are becoming less accessible. In Nigeria, condom distribution fell by 55 percent between December 2024 and March 2025.
Financing shocks
Charities and groups working on HIV/AIDS are coming under increasing pressure from funding cuts, with many reducing their operations or closing completely.
In eight countries where UNAIDS operates, 99.9 percent of HIV prevention services are funded externally, and only 0.1 percent are funded internally, leaving programs highly vulnerable to aid reductions.
“The fiscal constraints of the most burdened countries are enormous,” Byanyima said.
In 2024, around 570 girls and young women were becoming infected with HIV every day. However, 60 percent of women-led HIV organizations have lost funding or closed entirely.
The most vulnerable are trapped in ‘proxy wars’
“What is being fought are indirect wars for critical minerals, for energy and for influence, instrumentalizing the rights of the most marginalized people,” Ms. Byanyima said.
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 fully or partially closed. In Zimbabwe, services for sex workers – including access to prevention, testing and treatment – completely collapsed in 2025.
Science offers solutions.
Despite the setbacks, Ms. Byanyima highlighted that scientific advances still offer a path to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
“Science offers us solutions that could end this epidemic by 2030: long-acting PrEP, long-acting prevention, long-acting treatments, medications that we wouldn’t have thought of 10 years ago. All of that is there,” he said.
But he warned that sharp funding cuts, combined with a growing rejection of human rights, are moving the world further away from that goal.
