Study: Funding pullbacks threaten progress on UN goal to end HIV/AIDS
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Key takeaways:
- Global funding for the elimination of HIV/AIDS in 2022 fell to levels last seen in 2013.
- Inaction may result in 34.9 million new HIV cases and 17.7 million AIDS-related deaths.
Despite global progress toward eliminating HIV — including a growing number of nations that have hit goals to diagnose and successfully treat patients — funding pullbacks threaten to add decades to the battle, according to a study.
The United Nations in 2021 adopted the 95-95-95 goal — diagnosing 95% of people who have HIV, getting 95% of people who are diagnosed with HIV on ART and helping 95% of people on ART achieve viral suppression. This goal was then worked in to the UNAIDS strategy to end the AIDS pandemic by 2030.
In recent years, funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment globally in 2022 fell to the same levels as in 2013. Funding for the United States’ own U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has been flat for the last decade.
Erik Lamontagne, PhD, a senior economist at UNAIDS, and colleagues analyzed the cost of inaction toward global goals to end AIDS by 2030 and found the potential economic and human costs of missing the goal may be significant without an increase in international investment.
Lamontagne noted during a press conference ahead of the AIDS 2024 meeting in Munich that scaling up ART can reduce HIV infections and deaths.
“These are direct benefits. But it also enables those treated to live a normal life and contribute economically and socially. These are indirect benefits,” he said.
To determine the potential costs, benefits and economic returns of properly funding and meeting the 95-95-95 targets, the researchers compared an ideal scenario to “business-as-usual” with global funding for HIV services remaining at 2020 levels through the year 2050.
According to the researchers, failing to meet 95-95-95 targets could mean 34.9 million new HIV infections and 17.7 million AIDS-related deaths between 2021 and 2050, plus an economic cost of $8,291 per person among all low- and middle-income countries by 2050.
According to UNAIDS, five nations have achieved the 95-95-95 goals — Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe — and another 16 countries are close to reaching them, including eight in sub-Saharan Africa.
Since 2010, the number of people on ART rose fourfold, from 7.7 million to 29.8 million in 2022, but UNAIDS points out that roughly 9.2 million people with HIV still do not receive treatment and that steep increases in diagnoses in eastern Europe, central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are primarily due to a lack of services for key populations.
Meeting the 95-95-95 target in all 114 U.N. countries, even by 2050, is still possible with increased effort and investment in people-centered prevention and universal access to treatment, Lamontagne said.
“Everyone lost is a tragedy, and every new infection is a failure,” he said. “The cost of inaction we’re talking about here relates to gender inequality, health inequality, education inequality and economic inequality. But there is hope. Meeting the AIDS target would avoid these human and economic costs.”
References:
- Lamontagne E, et al. Abstract 11028. Presented at: AIDS 2024; July 22-26, 2024; Munich.
- New report from UNAIDS shows that AIDS can be ended by 2030 and outlines the path to get there. https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2023/july/unaids-global-aids-update. Published July 13, 2024. Accessed July 23, 2024.
- Reaching the 95-95-95 targets: The importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration. https://www.iasociety.org/sites/default/files/CPP/IAS-CPP-Key-considerations.pdf. Accessed July 23, 2024.
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Lamontagne E, et al. Abstract 11028. Presented at: AIDS 2024; July 22-26, 2024; Munich.
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