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Years of investment led by the United States in AIDS programs have reduced the number of people killed by the disease to the lowest levels observed in more than three decades, and provided medications to save lives for some of the most vulnerable in the world.
But in the last six months, the sudden withdrawal of American money has caused a “systemic shock”, UN officials warned, and added that if the financing is not replaced, it could lead to more than four million deaths related to AIDS and six million HIV infections for 2029.
“The current wave of financing losses has already destabilized supply chains, has led to the closure of health centers, left thousands of health clinics without personnel, delayed prevention programs, interrupted HIV test efforts and forced many community organizations to reduce or stop their HIV activities,” he said together in a report published on Thursday.
Unsida also said that she feared that other important donors could also reduce their support, reversing decades of progress against AIDS throughout the world, and that strong multilateral cooperation is in danger due to wars, geopolitical changes and climate change.
The $ 4 billion that the United States promised the overall response of HIV by 2025 disappeared practically during the night in January when the president of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered that all foreign aid be suspended and then moved to close the United States help agency.
Andrew Hill, an HIV expert at Liverpool University who is not connected to the United Nations, said that while Trump has the right to spend money in the United States as he considers, “any responsible government would have given an early warning so that countries could plan,” instead of appearing patients in Africa when clinics were closed during the night.
The emergency plan of the president of the United States for AIDS relief, or Pepfar, was launched in 2003 by the president of the United States, George W. Bush, the largest commitment of any country focused on a single disease.
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Unida described the program as a “life line” for countries with high HIV rates, and said it supported the tests of 84.1 million people, treatment for 20.6 million, among other initiatives. According to Nigeria data, Pepfar also financed 99.9 percent of the country’s budget for medications taken to prevent HIV.
In 2024, there were around 630,000 deaths related to AIDS worldwide, according to an estimation of UNAIDS: the figure has remained almost the same since 2022 after reaching a maximum point in approximately 2 million deaths in 2004.
Even before the US fund cuts. UU., The progress against HIV brake was unequal. United said half of all new infections are in sub -Saharan Africa.
Tom Ellman, from the doctors of Charity Without Borders, said that although some poorer countries were now moving to finance more of their own HIV programs, it would be impossible to fill the void left by the United States.
“There is nothing we can make to protect these countries from the sudden and vicious withdrawal of the support of the United States,” said Ellman, director of the Medical Unit of South Africa of Physicians without borders.
Experts also fear another loss: data. The United States paid the majority of HIV surveillance in African countries, including hospital, patient and electronic records, all of which have now ceased abruptly, according to Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Global Health Institute of the University of Duke.
“Without reliable data on how HIV is spreading, it will be incredibly difficult to stop it,” he said.
Uncertainty occurs when an injectable twice a year could end HIV, since studies published last year showed that the drug of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Gilead was 100% effective to prevent the virus.
In an launch event on Thursday, the Minister of Health of South Africa, Aaron Motsooledi, said that the country would “move mountains and rivers to make sure that all the adolescents who need it will obtain it”, saying that the past dependence of the continent in the help of the United States was “scary.”
Last month, the United States Drug and Food Administration approved the drug, called Yezugo, a measure that should have been a “threshold moment” to stop the AIDS epidemic, said Peter Maybarduk of the Public Citizen Defense Group.
But activists like Maybarduk said that Gilead’s prices will leave him out of the reach of many countries that need it. Gilead agreed to sell generic versions of the medication in 120 poor countries with high HIV rates, but has excluded almost all of Latin America, where rates are much lower but increase.
“We could be finishing AIDS,” said Maybarduk. “Instead, the United States is abandoning the fight.”
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
