UNAIDS: governments commit

The United Kingdom and Germany are among the governments that have pledged to increase their resources to support UNAIDS. The UK will increase its funding for this UN body to £8m per year, up from £2.5m in 2021. The UK has stressed “the importance of sufficient, predictable funding and timely” to enable UNAIDS to fulfill its mission. For its part, Germany will finance UNAIDS to the tune of 6 million euros this year, against 5 million euros previously. It recognizes the agency’s work to maintain HIV and other health services in conflict situations around the world, including in Ukraine and its neighbours. “The new resources pledged by governments are an important step in strengthening humanity’s efforts to end AIDS. In recent years, cuts in HIV funding have undermined the AIDS response. These recently announced increases could mark the beginning of a new dynamic to fill the worrying gaps,” commented UNAIDS. As the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment Conference is actively prepared, Peter Sands, its Executive Director, stressed that “to enable the Global Fund to achieve its goals, we need the full replenishment and we have also need UNAIDS to be fully funded. We won’t get there without a budget increase. We cannot get out of our hat of better results without increasing resources. For her part, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima, pointed out that underfunding had put the AIDS response to the test. Again, she pointed out that strong, predictable funding was essential to saving lives and ending the pandemic: “The bill will be much higher if we don’t end the AIDS pandemic than if we let’s end. And to remind the delegates of the stakes: “Hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of new infections, all preventable. The end of the AIDS pandemic at the end of this decade or an AIDS pandemic that continues unabated. The HIV pandemic is a crisis that causes one death per minute worldwide. But it can be over by 2030 if countries work together to tackle inequality and show ambition in their actions and investments.