Head UN AIDS The agency announced that the number of new HIV infections could jump more than six times to 2029 if the US support was falling to the largest AIDS program, warning that millions of people could die and more resistant illness strains could occur.
In an interview with Associated Press, the UNAIDS CEO of Winnie Byanyima said they were HIV infections in the last year, with only 1.3 million new cases recorded in 2023, which is 60 percent falling since the virus reached in 1995.
But from the announcement of US President Donald Trump, the US would froze all the help of 90 days, by Byanyima he said that officials estimate that by 2029 it could be 8.7 million people new to HIV, a tenth-time jump in death associated with AIDS -Do 6.3 million-on 6.3 million-and an additional 3.4 million children made orphans.
“We’ll see an increase in this disease,” she told Byanyima, speaking from Uganda. “It will cost lives if the US government does not change its mind and maintain its leadership,” she said, adding that it was not her place to criticize the policy of any government.
Byanyima declared that Trump’s administration did not abruptly interrupt funding, which she said had resulted in “panic, fear and confusion” in many African countries that are the most affected by AIDS.
In one Kenyan County, she said that 550 HIV workers were immediately discharged, while thousands of others in Ethiopia had been abolished, leaving health officials that they were unable to monitor the epidemic.
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She noted that the loss of US HIV financing was catastrophic, with external funding, mostly from the USA, which makes up about 90% of its programs. Nearly $ 400 million goes to countries like Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania, she said.
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“We can work with (Americans) on how to reduce their contribution if they want to reduce it,” she said. Byanyima described American withdrawal from global efforts on HIV as the second biggest crisis that the terrain ever faced-after years of delay it is necessary for poor countries to get life antiretroviruses that have long been available in rich countries.
Byanyima also said that the loss of American support in the effort to fight HIV came at another critical time, with the arrival of what she called the “magical prevention tool” known as Lenacapavir, twice a year, which was shown to offer complete Protection against HIV in women, who worked almost as good as men.
The widespread use of this shot, except for other interventions to stop HIV, could help end the disease as a public health problem in the next five years, Byanyima said.
She also noted that Lenacapavir, sold as a Sunlen, was developed by the American company Gilead.
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International assistance, to Byanyima said, “helped the American company innovate, that they make sense of something that will pay them millions and millions, but at the same time prevent new infections in the rest of the world.” Freezing in American financing, she said, did not make economic sense.
“We appeal to the US government to reconsider it, to realize that this is mutually useful,” she said, noting that foreign assistance makes up less than 1% of the total US budget. “Why should you be so disturbed by that 1%?”
Byanyima said that no other country or donors so far have enhanced to fill the void that will leave the loss of American assistance, but that she plans to visit numerous European capital to talk to global leaders.
“People will die because they have taken their rescue tools,” she said. “I have not heard of any European country that has been obliged to step, but I know they listen and try to see where they can enter because they care about the rights, about humanity.”
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