A new UNAIDS report has delivered a brutal wake-up call: decades of progress against HIV are now unravelling at the fastest rate in years, driven by collapsing funding and crumbling prevention services.
Nigeria’s Prevention Crisis
In Nigeria, condom distribution has plunged 55% in just one year. Testing sites are shutting. Community workers have vanished. The basic tools that kept new infections down are disappearing overnight.
A Continent-Wide Collapse
Across sub-Saharan Africa, 450,000 women have lost their community “mother mentors” who guided them through pregnancy and treatment. In 13 monitored countries, fewer people are starting antiretroviral therapy reversing a trend that once saved millions of lives.
Every day, 570 adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 still acquire HIV. With programmes gutted, that daily tragedy is only going to grow.
Funding Vanishes, Rights Shrink
Donors are slashing HIV budgets by 30–40% next year. At the same time, new laws are pushing key populations further underground and away from clinics. More than 60% of women-led organisations have already been forced to stop essential work.
The Deadly Math
If the world does nothing, 3.3 million additional people will contract HIV between 2025 and 2030 — most of them young African women and girls.
UNAIDS Chief: “We Are Abandoning People”
“Every number in this report is a human life,” said Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. “A teenager who can’t get PrEP. A mother who no longer has medicine. A clinic that closed because the money ran out. We cannot turn our backs on them.”
She demanded:
- Immediate restoration of funding
- Roll-out of long-acting prevention tools
- Real power handed back to local communities
“This is our crossroads,” Byanyima warned. “Either we come together and finally end AIDS, or we let decades of sacrifice slip away. The choice belongs to leaders and the consequences belong to millions of people.”
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