'A global problem needs a global solution,' says UNAIDS director
Winnie Byanyima is trying to hold onto hope in the face of what she calls unbelievable cruelty.
She is the director of UNAIDS, the United Nations agency that, until recently, was on track to meet its target of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
But now, as President Donald Trump’s second administration rapidly and dramatically scales back U.S. foreign aid contributions, UNAIDS is instead predicting in a new report that there will be six million new HIV infections and four million additional deaths within the next four years alone.
'An act of criminal negligence'
Dr. Julio Montaner, executive director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, agrees. He was one of the people who helped develop the multi-drug cocktail of antiretrovirals that have become the gold standard for HIV treatment, and he helped establish the criteria the UN uses for its 2030 target.
For a long time, he says, that “made in Canada” strategy was working worldwide. Fewer people were contracting HIV, and thanks to antiretrovirals, people living with HIV were not transmitting it.
A huge part of that, he says, was because of the funding from the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), which has financed about 70 per cent of the global AIDS response since it was founded in 2003 by former president George W. Bush.