An AIDS-free generation is within reach, but not guaranteed
New tools and community-led care can save lives, but only if governments sustain the global HIV response. For more than four decades, the global AIDS
New tools and community-led care can save lives, but only if governments sustain the global HIV response. For more than four decades, the global AIDS response has been powered by grief, rage, courage and determination. Families buried loved ones long before their time. Communities confronted discrimination and built networks of care when the silence was deafening. Scientific breakthroughs and community-driven innovation transformed HIV from a near-certain death sentence into a chronic, manageable condition. The result is one of the greatest public health achievements of the past half century. That success is now under threat. Over the past decade, AIDS-related deaths among children fell by almost 70 percent, and the number of adolescent girls acquiring HIV halved. Twenty-two countries, from Brazil to Bahamas, Cuba to Thailand, have eliminated vertical transmission of HIV (from mothers to newborns) or are on the path to doing so. Last year, the Maldives became the first country in the world to eliminate HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B as public health threats – a milestone that once seemed unimaginable. Then came the shock. In 2025, abrupt funding cuts disrupted the systems that made this progress possible, especially in high-burden countries reliant on sustained investment in HIV programmes across Africa and parts of Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Prevention efforts stalled. Clinics faced stockouts of essential medicines. Health workers were laid off. Systems built over decades began to unravel in months.
At the United Nations High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, leaders warned the world faces a “perilous moment”, with the global HIV response losing ground. Behind the headlines and rhetoric are widening inequalities. In West and Central Africa, treatment coverage for pregnant women is too low. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, one of the few regions where infections are rising, any disruption risks accelerating the epidemic further. In Latin America and the Caribbean, persistent inequalities continue to leave marginalised communities, including young people, without consistent access to prevention and care. Across all regions, children risk becoming even more invisible. Even before these disruptions, the world was falling short. Today, more than 2.4 million children and adolescents are living with HIV, yet only about 55 percent are receiving life-saving treatment – far behind adults. Every day, around 200 children still die from AIDS-related causes. These are not isolated failures. They are a global failure to reach those most at risk. Deadly consequences A stark Cost of Inaction analysis from UNICEF and UNAIDS shows where this path leads. If HIV prevention and treatment coverage is reduced by half, the world could see up to three million children newly infected with HIV by 2040, and 1.8 million children die from AIDS-related causes. These outcomes are not inevitable. They are the result of choices being made now. But it was never data alone that moved the world to act on HIV.
The BriefWire