HIV prevention: Dismantled and underfunded - Press conference | United Nations

A “perilous moment” for the response to HIV, warned UNAIDS. Angeli Achrekar, the Assistant Secretary-General of UNAIDS addressed the press about a new UNAIDS report, release with latest data on HIV from 2025. The report shows that external funding cuts, a strong push back on human rights and under investment and under prioritization of HIV prevention and community services are threatening to reverse years of gains in the AIDS response. Dramatic cuts in aid that highly burdened, low-income countries depend on for their HIV response have had a devastating impact. Global development assistance from multiple countries fell by 23 percent in 2025 - the sharpest drop on record - and HIV programmes have been hit hard. HIV testing programmes fell by 22 percent in high-burden settings between 2024 and 2025. Meaning people are unable to access treatment and the virus continuing to spread. Funding for condoms has been cut by more than 90 percent in some cases. PrEP (daily medicine to prevent HIV) uptake dropped sharply falling by 38 percent between 2024 and 2025 in 62 countries reporting to UNAIDS. HIV prevention is being dismantled at the very moment the world needs to take it to scale, especially with new, revolutionary, long-acting prevention innovations coming to market. Prevention was already underfunded at just 11 percent of total HIV spending in 2024—and that limited investment is now shrinking further with no signs that domestic funding will fill the gap. The HIV response has been the most successful story in global health over the last 25 years, AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by 56 percent from 1.3 million in 2010 to 570 000 in 2025. New infections have been reduced by 43 percent since 2010 to 1.2 million, and 78 percent of the 40.9 million people living with HIV are now on treatment (32.1 million). But this success is fragile—nearly 9 million people are not on treatment. At a time when external funding is reducing, treatment gains are extremely fragile. Western and central Africa, for example, is around 90 percent dependent on external funding for its HIV treatment programmes. Without sustained external financing and increased domestic resources, there is a serious risk of treatment interruptions—which will mean rising deaths and rising new infections. Progress remains highly uneven—some regions are improving, while others are seeing rising infections (eastern Europe and central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America have seen rising new HIV infections since 2010). And every week, 3000 adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa acquire HIV—this is one of the clearest signs the world is failing to reach some of the most vulnerable populations. Community-led organizations, civil society, organizations led by people living with HIV, young people, sex worker organizations for example, are the most effective in delivering services to people living with and affected by HIV, yet they are not prioritized and are being pushed to the brink. They are on the front line to deliver HIV prevention, treatment and support services to up to 60 percent of their own communities including, men who have sex with men, sex workers, people who inject drugs and their sexual partners, yet funding has been drastically cut and there are no apparent increases from domestic resources. A recent community-led study of 79 community-led organizations across 47 countries and three continents (Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa) showed a 50 percent drop in community support services for people living with HIV, an 82 percent reduction in services for sex workers and service reductions of 85 percent for men who have sex with men. Support services for survivors of gender-based violence are also declining. When communities lose funding, the entire response loses reach, trust and effectiveness. The report also shows a dangerous rollback of rights. Criminalization of marginalized populations is increasing for the first time since UNAIDS began tracking these trends.


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