World close to ending Aids pandemic, but West slashes budgets, UN chief warns

Bel Trew speaks to head of UNAIDS as it fights funding cuts

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The UK should “fight to the finish line” and help end the Aids pandemic, especially with “miracle” prevention drugs now available, the head of UNAIDS has urged amid unprecedented global aid cuts.

The world was on track to ending the HIV/Aids pandemic by 2030. But massive reductions in funding from the US, Europe and now the UK have caused the “biggest ever disruption” to services, Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS executive director, told The Independent before the launch of its annual report yesterday.

If these cuts continue, in the same timeframe there will be millions more deaths and infections, as well as double the number of medication-resistant strains, according to The Independent’s own modelling of data in an eight-month project reporting across Uganda, Zimbabwe and Senegal.

This will probably worsen as further reductions to UK foreign aid spending are expected to be announced at the end of the year. The Independent is urging Sir Keir Starmer to ring-fence this funding in a campaign launched this week ahead of World Aids Day on 1 December.

Byanyima, who is from Uganda and lost her brother to Aids, urged the UK to protect the remaining funding, particularly given new prevention tools - like lenacapivar - are on the cusp of being rolled out which could bring new infections down to zero.

“We are so close to finishing this race. Forty years ago we had nothing. Today we have a range of tools that could help us to stop new infections completely, and we have treatment tools that keep people healthy for the rest of their lives,” Byanyima said, speaking from South Africa, home to the world’s largest number of people living with HIV.

“We have on the market now, these tools we call magical. Lenacapavir [injection] has almost 100 per cent efficacy. If you take it, you will not get infected, and it's injectable once every six months.