For more than four decades, the global AIDS response has been driven by grief, rage, courage and determination. Families buried loved ones before their time. Communities confronted discrimination and built networks of care. Scientific breakthroughs transformed HIV from a death sentence into a manageable condition. This success is now under threat.

Over the past decade, AIDS-related deaths among children fell by nearly 70%, and new HIV infections among adolescent girls halved. Twenty-two countries have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV or are on track. Last year, the Maldives became the first country to eliminate HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B as public health threats.

In 2025, abrupt funding cuts disrupted the systems that enabled this progress, especially in high-burden countries in Africa. Prevention efforts stalled, clinics ran out of essential medicines, health workers were laid off. Systems built over decades began to unravel in months.

At a UN High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, leaders warned the world faces a “perilous moment.” In West and Central Africa, treatment coverage for pregnant women is too low. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, infections are rising. In Latin America and the Caribbean, inequalities leave marginalized communities without consistent access to care.

A Cost of Inaction analysis by UNICEF and UNAIDS warns that if prevention and treatment coverage is halved, up to 3 million children could be newly infected with HIV by 2040, and 1.8 million children could die from AIDS-related causes. These outcomes are not inevitable—they are the result of choices being made now.

Solutions exist: long-acting prevention options like lenacapavir, mentor mother programs, and government leadership. Oman, Kazakhstan and Ecuador show that success is possible with political will and sustained investment. Political declarations must be judged by one measure alone: lives saved.

Source: www.aljazeera.com