By Jennifer Rigby
LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Efforts to prevent people from getting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis were hit harder by global aid cuts last year than services to treat existing patients, according to the head of a global partnership to fight the three killer diseases.
That saved lives in the short-term but risks a wave of new infections in future, said Peter Sands, head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
He said impacted countries and the Global Fund worked hard to prevent some of the worst-case scenarios forecast after the United States and other wealthy nations sharply reduced aid spending. But many countries were forced to scale back prevention programmes to protect core treatment services.
SLOWED PROGRESS
“Obviously, in terms of the momentum towards ending these diseases as public health threats, if you back off on prevention, you slow your progress,” Sands said.
He spoke ahead of the release of the Global Fund’s annual report on Wednesday, covering its work in more than 100 countries.
The report showed that treatment programmes largely held up despite the funding cuts. The number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy for HIV rose by 1.3 million to 26.9 million in 2025, while 7.4 million people were treated for tuberculosis, broadly unchanged from the previous year. Distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets for malaria prevention increased to 196 million from 162 million.
But the picture varied by country. The report also said that TB programmes had faced disruptions to case-finding and diagnosis, while malaria responses had tackled medicine shortages and delays to prevention campaigns.
For HIV prevention, 300,000 fewer people got access to pre-exposure prophylaxis, down to 1.1 million in 2025 compared to 2024, putting them at risk of infection.
Sands said it was too early to assess the effect of the cuts on infection and death rates because that data would not be available for several months.
“I wouldn’t want people concluding that therefore it was all okay and we could survive with less money,” said Sands. “The fact that prevention programs across all three diseases have been cut – that will have consequences.”
(Reporting by Jennifer RigbyEditing by Ros Russell)
