More than 2 million additional people will contract HIV if the international goal to raise $26 billion by 2020 to stop the spread of AIDS is delayed by even five years, and 1 million more will die from it in the coming 12 years.
That's the latest assessment from UNAIDS, the United Nations program on AIDS and HIV and one of the leading international agencies tasked with mitigating the virus. The organization now faces a precarious situation: Countries around the world have all benefited from an unprecedented international effort to stabilize the spread of HIV and AIDS, treat those who are infected and prevent future instances.
Those efforts, beginning in the early 1990s, yielded historic success and since 2006 have accounted for a steady drop in global AIDS-related deaths as an increasing number of people receive services and many can now live with HIV.
Yet those achievements have also led to an air of complacency, scientists and public health leaders say, made worse by some Western countries' controlling the domestic spread of HIV and AIDS. The successes preceded, for example, U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed reduction in investment in groundbreaking organizations fighting AIDS such as PEPFAR, an invention of the George W. Bush administration that currently supports more than 14 million men, women and children around the world. Trump also reportedly closed down the White House's Office of National AIDS Policy in January 2017, formed during President Bill Clinton's administration to coordinate U.S. efforts to fight HIV and AIDS.
Those factors contribute to the current 20 percent shortfall in the United Nations' 2020 goal, with no indication that new sources of funding will materialize soon. As the 22nd International AIDS conference begins on Monday in the Netherlands, experts worry that the effect will be felt worldwide.
"There is a very real, good news story to tell. And there is a very real bad news story to tell. By telling them both in the same breath, I fear we may have negated them both," says Jenny Ottenhoff, policy director for global health at The ONE Campaign, a nonprofit organization co-founded by U2 frontman Bono and dedicated to fighting poverty and preventable afflictions such as AIDS in Africa. "What we've seen in the last five years is progress is still continuing at a steady pace, and there's still steady international support, but there are signs of increasing complacency and really a lack of urgency to address the problem." Read more via US News