Millions face AIDS risk due to funding cuts

Millions of people could die prematurely because of funding cuts to the United Nations agency tasked with tackling HIV and AIDS.

Massively reduced support from donors, including the United States, has prompted the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, to announce plans to cut its workforce by more than half, and to make cuts to programs.

The agency said the scaling back, which was recommended by an independent committee, means "the overall global AIDS response is facing a severe shock and many of the gains made in the past few decades are at risk of being reversed".

UNAIDS said the funding cuts mean it will cut positions at its secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, and begin to "prioritize the most essential functions", Euronews reported.

However, UNAIDS said it will not pull out of any of the 36 countries where it has front-line services.

Most of the funding cuts can be attributed to US President Donald Trump's slashing of Washington's international aid budget but there have also been cuts in financial support from other countries.

UNAIDS has warned that more than 6 million people could die in the next four years if its services are not maintained at current levels. The agency said it fears an additional 2,000 people a day could become infected with HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS, during the coming four years without its current level of intervention.

Relocating workers

The Associated Press reported that UNAIDS employees learned about the plans at a meeting on Tuesday during which they were told the current workforce of 600 based at the agency's head office will be cut to between 280 and 300. The agency also told its workers it may move some of them out of highrent Geneva to less expensive locations in Bonn in Germany, Nairobi in Kenya, and Johannesburg in South Africa.

UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said earlier this year that HIV infections could be running at six times today's rate by 2029, and that more resistant strains of the disease could emerge, because of cuts to programs.

Byanyima said the current funding cuts, while painful, are presenting "an opportunity to rethink and develop more efficient ways of delivering life-saving support".

In the past, the US has contributed funding for more than 40 percent of UNAIDS' core programs. The agency has also been supported financially by the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Trump's decision to slash US aid led the World Food Programme to announce last month that it will need to make major job cuts. And UNICEF, the UN children's agency, has also said it will need to make cuts that could impact around 20 percent of its workforce.