The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS has warned that global HIV prevention is facing its worst setback in decades, with funding for condoms plummeting by over 90 per cent in some countries.

UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima stated this while delivering an assessment of the current state of HIV response in New York.

“HIV testing has fallen 22 per cent in high-burden settings, meaning that people don’t know their status and the virus continues to spread,” she said.

Ms Byanyima added that “funding for condoms had been cut by more than 90 per cent” in some places, pointing out that “prevention is being dismantled at the very moment we should be scaling innovations like new long-acting medicines”.

“According to the OECD, development finance fell 23 per cent in 2025, the sharpest drop on record,” Ms Byanyima added.

She warned that HIV programmes in high-burden, low-income countries had been particularly affected.

“Our newest UNAIDS data, released last week, showed fragility,” she said.

UN deputy secretary-general Amina Mohammed warned that progress against HIV was slowing just as financial pressures and shrinking support threaten to reverse decades of gains.

Ms Mohammed, however, reflected on the extraordinary progress achieved through decades of global cooperation.

“In the 45 years since the first case of AIDS was reported, the world has demonstrated uncommon resolve and solidarity,” she said. “That effort helped reduce AIDS-related deaths by 70 per cent since their peak in 2004 and brought lifesaving antiretroviral treatment to more than 32 million people worldwide.”

Ms Mohammed warned that progress remains uneven and fragile.

By the end of 2024, 9.2 million people still lacked access to HIV treatment, while 1.3 million people acquired HIV and 630,000 died from AIDS-related causes, according to UN data.

“Funding cuts are directly affecting prevention efforts, and the community systems that are so essential to the response,” Ms Mohammed said.

She called for renewed action across five priority areas: expanding access to prevention and treatment, strengthening community leadership, protecting human rights, increasing financing and reviving international cooperation.

“Human rights and equality must continue to guide our response,” she said, warning that stigma, discrimination and shrinking civic space continue to place lives at risk.

Speakers urged governments to recommit to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and adopt a new Political Declaration to guide the global response over the next five years.

(NAN)