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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged African leaders to holistically address the HIV funding gap, which threatens decades of progress made in curbing the disease. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have also tasked African leaders to enhance their commitments to the fight against AIDS.
These calls for renewed commitments to ending HIV in Africa came on the heels of the commemoration of 2025 World AIDS Day. The World AIDS Day is celebrated December 1 every year to draw global attention to the disease and how to combat it. The theme of this year’s World AIDS Day, “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response,” calls for sustained political leadership, international cooperation, and human-rights-centred approaches to end AIDS by 2030.
“After decades of progress, the HIV response stands at a crossroads. Life-saving services are being disrupted and many communities face heightened risks and vulnerabilities. Yet amid these challenges, hope endures in the determination, resilience, and innovation of communities who strive to end AIDS,” WHO stated.
In the same vein, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Mohammed Janabi, expressed the need to build a stronger, more self-reliant and more integrated response to HIV. He also stated that across Africa, countries were working to embed HIV services within primary health care systems, ensuring inclusive, people-centred care. “Sustaining this progress means protecting the infrastructure that supports testing, treatment and prevention, while accelerating access to innovation. New tools, such as long-acting HIV prevention medicines like Lenacapavir can transform lives, requiring only two injections a year,” Janabi said.
He also revealed that a total of 21.7 million people living with HIV now receive life-saving antiretroviral therapy while community-led testing, differentiated care and integration with primary healthcare services were transforming how care was delivered.
UNICEF also warned that except countries scale up HIV services for mothers, children and adolescents, about 1.8 million children could die of AIDS-related causes by 2040. According to new UNICEF/UN AIDS projections, if programme coverage declines by half, additional 1.1 million children could acquire HIV and another 820,000 children could die by 2040. This will lead the total toll among children to three million infections and 1.8million deaths.
According to facts from the WHO, in 2024, an estimated 40.8 million people were living with HIV globally. Approximately 630,000 people died from HIV-related causes in 2024, while an estimated 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2024. The Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicentre of the disease with nearly 65 per cent of all people living with HIV.
According to the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), an estimated two million people were living with HIV as of 2023. The national HIV prevalence rate is 1.3 per cent among adults aged 15-49, with higher prevalence in women (1.6 per cent) than men (1.0 per cent) in Nigeria. No fewer than 1,400 new cases were reported weekly, and 42,000 adults and children died from AIDS-related illnesses in Nigeria in 2023. Available figures show that sex workers (15.5 per cent ), men who have sex with men (25.0 per cent), people who inject drugs (10.9 per cent) and transgender people (28.8 per cent) have significantly higher HIV prevalence rates.
Unfortunately, the 2025 World AIDS Day is a sad reminder that HIV disease is still around, despite measures put in place by government to check its spread and possibly eliminate it by 2030. We call on Nigerian government and other African leaders to wake up and address the HIV funding challenge. The era of depending so much on donor funding in the fight against HIV is over. It is time our leaders took responsibility for adequately funding HIV/AIDS programmes.
If we must end HIV by 2030 as being envisaged, we must address the funding gap, especially in preventing new infections and giving life-saving drugs to those already affected. The federal government should fully integrate HIV services into the national healthcare systems as recently requested by the Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWHAN). There should be no room for complacency in handling the HIV menace. Let the federal and state governments scale up HIV funding in view of apparent donor fatigue. The local governments should be part of this crusade to end HIV in Nigeria by 2030. We believe that improving HIV funding and strengthening access to care will curb stigma and discrimination suffered by affected persons.
Beyond HIV, the federal government must prioritise health funding to take care of existing diseases and emerging ones. The government should intensify sensitisation programmes on HIV, highlighting its causes, preventive measures and treatment options. Although HIV is not a death sentence, early detection is vital for reducing the viral load and possible health risks. We urge the public to observe all HIV preventive protocols.
