Nigeria: Children Bear Brunt As Funding Crisis Threatens Global HIV Gains - New Report
A new UNAIDS report highlights a critical funding crisis that is hindering global efforts to combat HIV among children and adolescents. Despite significant progress since 2010, the report warns that declining international financing threatens to reverse gains and prevent the achievement of 2030 public health goals.
Why it matters
The disparity in treatment access for children compared to adults remains a major public health failure that could lead to thousands of preventable deaths.
Children are increasingly bearing the brunt of the global HIV response as funding cuts disrupt prevention, testing and treatment services, with 2.27 million children and adolescents aged 0-19 living with HIV in 2025.
The UNAIDS Special Report for AIDS 2026, released Monday at the International AIDS Conference in Rio de Janeiro, showed that about 240,000 children and adolescents acquired HIV and 74,000 died from AIDS-related causes last year.
Among children aged 0-14, about 1.26 million were living with HIV, 93,000 acquired the virus and 61,000 died. This translates to about 255 children acquiring HIV and 167 dying from AIDS-related causes every day in 2025.
UNAIDS warned that although the world has made major progress against HIV, declining international financing could reverse the gains.
"The world is not on track to achieve the 2030 goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat," UNAIDS warned.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in