The latest UNAIDS report - Press Conference

We are delighted to be joined once again by Angelie Ashrakar, who is the Deputy Executive Director of UN AIDS, and she is here to present the new UA AIDS report.
Yes.
So please, you have the floor and then we'll take some questions.
Our tech will do that for you.
Don't worry.
Perfect.
Thank you so much, and it's a pleasure to be back.
Thank you.
Here we are.
The world continues to be shaken repeatedly by pandemics, one after the other from COVID 19 to epox, now Ebola.
But with the longstanding HIV pandemic where the world has made remarkable progress, we're seeing the perfect storm growing.
This storm threatens to reverse years of gains in the AIDS response.
Today, as was just mentioned, UN AIDS is launching a report that shows the impact of these converging crises that will result in dire outcomes for the HIV response.
We're truly at a perilous moment.
Decades of progress in the AIDS response are at risk just when we should be getting to the finish line.
For the first time, there is a real possibility of reversal.
Yes, HIV infections and AIDS deaths are at their lowest in over 30 years, but we're still far off track to end AIDS by 2030.
There were 1.2 million new HIV infections at the end of 2025, 43% lower than 2010, but nowhere close to the target of 370,000 by 2025.
Progress is also highly uneven.
Some regions are improving while others are seeing spikes in new HIV infections and every week, 3,000 adolescent girls and young women in sub Saharan Africa are newly infected with HIV.
This is one of the clearest signs that we are failing to reach some of the most vulnerable populations.
Also, AIDS deaths have fallen to 570,000 again, nowhere close to the target of 250,000 by 2025.
There is a funding crisis which is a core threat to the HIV 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 over 20% in 2025, the sharpest drop on record and HIV programs have been hit hard.
While we're seeing increases in domestic resources in the HIV response, it's not enough.
There are some concrete examples of what we're seeing that's being impacted by the funding crisis.
HIV testing programs are falling by over 20% in high burden settings.
This means that people don't know they are living with HIV, they cannot access treatment, and the virus will continue to spread, increasing new infections.
Funding for condoms, for example, has been cut by more than 90% in some cases.
Prep, the daily medicine to prevent HIV, the uptake has dropped sharply and fell by nearly 40% 2024-2025, in 62 countries that have been reporting to UN AIDS.
HIV prevention is being dismantled at the very moment we need to take it to scale, especially with new prevention innovations that are coming on the market such as long acting HIV prevention.
Prevention has already been underfunded at just 11% of the total HIV spending in 2024, and that limited investment is now shrinking even further.
Moving to lifesaving treatment.
This is a success story that is severely under strain.
32.1 million people are now living on lifesaving treatment, 78% of all people living with HIV.
This is a great public health achievement, a success story.
But even this success is fragile.
Some regions are heavily reliant on external financing for treatment programs.
For example, in Western Central Africa, They are around 90% dependent on external funding for HIV treatment in some countries.
This is extremely fragile when external funding is declining.
Without sustained financing and increased domestic financing, we risk treatment interruptions.
What this means is rising deaths and rising new infections.
Let's be clear.
There are still 8.8 million nearly 9 million people living with HIV that do not have access to that lifesaving treatment.
Support services for survivors of gender based violence are also declining.
And when communities lose funding, we also know that we also know that community systems are collapsing.
Community led organizations, civil society, organizations led by people living with HIV young people, sex worker organizations, for example, are most effective that are most effective in delivering services to people living with and affected by HIV.
These are really the backbones of the HIV response and these community led organizations are not being prioritized.
In sub Saharan Africa, 80% of community programs to support people to access HIV prevention programs have been cut.
Of these cuts are happening without commensurate domestic resources that are augmenting them.
We see community led organizations being cut across the board.
In a recent study, 79 community led organizations across 47 countries and three continents have shown a 50% drop in support services for people living with HIV, for example.
Service reductions, including 50% reduction in the delivery of that lifesaving medicine to prevent HIV has been decreased.
When communities lose funding, the entire response loses trust, reach, and effectiveness for the most vulnerable and the most in need.
We're also seeing inequality.
Those who continue to be left behind are those that are the hardest to reach the children, young women, key and vulnerable populations, including men who have sex with men, sex workers, people who inject drugs, transgender women and their sexual partners.
And all of this is happening while there is an intense pushback on human rights and democratic rights.
Diseases spread fastest when human rights are weakest.
We're seeing a dangerous rollback on rights around the world, more stigma and discrimination, shrinking civic space.
This all hinders progress in the HIV response.
Criminalization of key populations is increasing for the first time since UN AIDS began tracking these trends.
Community organizations are being defunded or shut down.
In 2025, civic space was narrowed, obstructed or completely closed in 159 of 198 countries and territories.
If civil society does not have the ability to act and have a voice, the HIV response will be held back.
This has real public health consequences.
When people fear arrest or discrimination, they do not go in to test, they do not seek care, and the HIV epidemic continues to grow.
But it's not all doom and gloom.
We do see windows of opportunity.
Domestic funding is rising, but it cannot replace global solidarity.
In 2024, we also saw donor contributions totaling $8.37 billion in the HIV response.
But this still falls short of the resource needs, which is 21.9 billion by 2030.
The share of domestic resources for the HIV response increased from 28% in 2010 to over 50% in 2024.
But as I said earlier, the gap is still so huge.
Since January 2025, over 52 countries have committed to increasing domestic financing.
However, domestic resources cannot fill the gap left behind by these funding cuts.
Many countries are facing debt crisis, 28 African countries spend more on debt than on health, for example.
But we're also seeing regional initiatives that are scaling up that are supporting the HIV response, and this gives us hope.
Regional initiatives like the Accra reset led by President the President of Ghana, President Mahama, the African Union Roadmap to 2030 and beyond, and the Alliance for the elimination of HIV in the Americas.
These are all examples of a new face to aid and development overall.
We also see hope in integration, integration of HIV into the broader health system and development systems.
We see more and more countries moving to this direction of integrating HIV into their health systems and into health insurance systems, for example.
This is promising.
We see commitments from some countries and multilateral partners.
The US government, for example, and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria, continue to resource and support the HIV response.
This offers opportunity for countries But it also offers the opportunity for countries to step up in their self reliant way to fund and resource their responses in an increasing capacity.
We also see hope in innovation.
Innovation right now can really drive further gains.
We've seen since the end of March this year, 6,000 people receiving long acting Lena Caver across five different countries in Sub Saharan Africa.
This is great news.
This is by a partnership from multiple countries, the global fund, different private sector partners.
But this still falls short of reaching the 20 million that are in need of HIV prevention services.
Ending AIDS requires shared responsibility, national leadership, and global solidarity.
We do know how to end AIDS.
But the question now is political.
Will we invest or will we retreat? We have an opportunity in front of us with the high level meeting on HIV and AIDS that is coming up in just 20 days, June 22 and 23rd, right here in the UN General Assembly, where a high level meeting which is convened every five years will happen.
This is absolutely critical because this is the last one before the goal of ending AIDS by 2030, where countries will come together to adopt a new and strong political declaration on HIV.
All countries have been actively negotiating right now on the political Declaration under the facilitation of Botswana and Georgia and under the leadership of the president of the General Assembly.
This political declaration must provide the global roadmap to transition the HIV response to a sustainable, country led, community led approach that is required to both end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 but also sustain the gains beyond 2030.
It will include new 2030 targets and have the new approaches of the global AID strategy, which is the blueprint for us to get there to 2030 and end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and sustain these gains.
These goals are achievable despite the peril we're in now, these goals are still possible, but it does require all of us, all countries of the world coming together, all communities of the world coming together like we did at the start of this epidemic.
That continued unification is critical by all global partners.
We know, again, what it takes to end AIDS, but now the question is, will we invest or will we retreat? If we follow the global aid strategy and the UN member commitments for a strong political declaration, this is what we will need to get us to 2030 and beyond.
If we risk doing that, if we fail to take action, decades of all of this progress will reverse.
So with that, I thank you.
Thank you, Angeli.
Ami, and then we'll go to the back.
Thank you.
On behalf of the UN Correspondent Association, thank you very much for doing this briefing.
I'm Amie Boiler from AFP News Agency.
You described the decrease of funding from the US and other donors in the last few years.
Is it only mechanical because of the overall decrease in humanitarian aid and development aid or do you feel there's also a feeling in these countries, in this donor countries where maybe aid is not as much as a death sentence as it was at the beginning, that is not seen by them as a priority anymore? Thank you.
Please.
Thank you.
I think that's a really good question.
What we've seen over, as I noted, what we've seen over the past few years is a decrease of foreign assistance from donor funding in the AIDS response from multiple countries, over a 23% decrease 2024-2025, for example.
But we've seen a steady decrease It is both a decrease in assistance, but it's also, as you rightly note, as people are living longer and longer with HIV because they've been on lifesaving treatment, there is complacency that we're seeing across countries.
People are not seeing that death and despair that we once saw 30 years ago.
But that hides the truth.
That hides the truth that there are gaps that still exist in the HIV response, like with children that are not being reached, like with young women, as I noted, like with key populations in different countries where we're seeing spikes that are happening in the HIV response.
Unless we tackle the reality of what of what is actually happening in the epidemic, we will never get to the end of it.
It is both a decline of resources, but it's also a bit of complacency because we're not seeing that death and despair like we saw 35 years ago.
But it doesn't mean that AIDS is not over.
Thank you.
Yes, please, Zena in the back.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for this opportunity and for shedding light about this sensitive topic.
With the decreasing the funding and cutting the funding, especially from the health organization lately by the measure force and what you mentioned that it became political and the number that you know and the number that you don't know, how you overcome this decreasing of funding and how you manage to find other ways to get money and equipment for the people who need help.
Well, again, it's a really good question.
What we've seen in the decreases of funding over time is alarming.
But we also have been seeing domestic resources increasing, not at the rate that they need to be, but we've seen leadership real strong leadership within countries around the globe, as well as regionally, like I mentioned, some of these initiatives that we're seeing.
This is the kind of support that needs to continue.
As donor funding decreases, domestic resources need to increase, but we all have to work together in solidarity because it's not going to happen overnight.
It requires a transition to sovereignty to, you know, self reliance that doesn't happen overnight.
It takes mutual accountability and a shared solidarity because this is a pandemic and that does require a global effort working together.
For a follow up question.
Follow up question.
I regarding the war zones, and I believe in the Third World or the developed world, they are more and they are hiding this because the traditions there are different than Western countries.
How you reach to get the exact number from there or how you reach to people to get the right information from them and shed light about this disease.
The importance of communities and civil society in the HIV response has always been one of the most important hallmarks of the HIV response.
Communities and civil society, people living with HIV, women that are affected by HIV, key populations, sex workers, these communities are those that are the most trusted.
They are the ones that know exactly where the populations are that are most in need.
And so one of the hallmarks of the HIV response has been working very, very closely hand in glove with community organizations.
We are very concerned at this point because as community organizations and civil society, are put to the margins of the HIV response, we will lose that ability to make sure that we are reaching those populations that are in the most difficult places to find.
So community led organizations need to continue to be resourced and engaged in the response.
The second point is around the data.
The data have to continue to guide the HIV response.
UN AIDS works hand in glove with country governments as well as communities in working through and ensuring that community data, as well as quality data, as well as statistical data and financial data, multi sectoral data are guiding the response.
That has to continue into the future because that guides where the gaps in the response are, where countries might be faltering.
Data needs to continue to guide the response and it's not just health data, it is community data as well as financial and policy data.
One last question, sorry.
What are your tools to raise awareness about this issue, especially in the conflict zones? So our tools to raise awareness on this issue, I mean, first and foremost, I think right now with what we have in front of us with the high level meeting on HIV and this political declaration, all countries of the world are convening together.
That's really important.
Countries that are in conflict, countries that are not in conflict, countries that are surrounded by conflict, So this political commitment right now that's happening as we approach the high level meeting on HIV and AIDS in 20 days, this is really, really critical.
The other thing that we're doing is we're there at the country level, the joint program on UN ADS, as well as partners, community partners, all partners of the countries.
We're working together in conflict settings and otherwise to make sure that HIV continues to stay high on the agenda, and that is our collective responsibility to make sure that that happens.
A, thank you very much.
Thank you.
And we hope to welcome back here soon.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.