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HIV and AIDS

The Challenge

Since the creation of the Global Fund over 20 years ago, our partnership has achieved what was once considered impossible. Efforts by communities, governments, civil society, the private sector and global health partners have resulted in extraordinary progress in the fight against HIV. Globally, new HIV infections declined by 38%, from 2.1 million in 2010 to 1.3 million in 2022.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed us off track. While 2022 saw us recover our momentum, vulnerable groups, especially children and adolescent girls and young women, and other key populations are still being left behind. In 2022, only 57% of the children infected with HIV globally were getting the lifesaving treatment they need, compared with 77% of adults; this meant that 660,000 children living with HIV were not receiving antiretroviral therapy, leading to 84,000 deaths. Adolescent girls and young women (aged 15-24 years) are still at high risk of HIV, despite improvements over the past decade, accounting for 210,000 new infections in 2022. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women are more than three times as likely to acquire HIV as adolescent boys and young men.

Reduction in HIV incidence rate among women aged 15-24

</svg >% change 2010-2022 in 13 priority countries
</svg >Bubble size represents new HIV infections, 2022
HIV burden estimates from UNAIDS, 2023 release.

HIV and AIDS by the Numbers:

Funding

  • The Global Fund provides 28% of all international financing for HIV programs.
  • We have invested US$25.5 billion in programs to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS as of June 2023.
  • We have invested US$4.6 billion in TB/HIV programs as of June 2023.

Prevention

  • 15.3 million people were reached with HIV prevention services in 2022.
  • 710,000 HIV-positive mothers received medicine to keep themselves alive and prevent transmission of HIV to their babies in 2022.

Testing and Treatment

  • 24.5 million people on antiretroviral therapy for HIV in 2022.
  • 53.1 million HIV tests were taken in 2022 in countries where the Global Fund invests.
    • 12.2 million of these HIV tests were taken by priority and key populations, including infants, adolescent girls and young women, adolescent boys and young men, gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people, people who inject drugs, people in prisons, and other vulnerable populations.

Read more about HIV in our Results Report

See more HIV Data on the Data Explorer

Our Response

The Global Fund provides 28% of all international financing for HIV programs and has invested US$25.5 billion in programs to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS and US$4.6 billion in TB/HIV programs as of June 2023. Since 2020, we have also stepped up support to countries to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the HIV response.

Our investments in the fight against HIV are having an impact. In countries where the Global Fund invests, AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by 72% and new infections have been reduced by 61% since 2002.

Select:

With prevention and ARVs (actual)
If there had been no prevention or ARVs

Trends in AIDS-related deaths

Trends in new HIV infections

HIV burden estimates from UNAIDS, 2023 release. Estimation of “no prevention or ARVs” trends from Goals, AEM and AIM models where available. For some countries estimates of burden are not available from UNAIDS. Global Fund portfolio indicates countries where the Global Fund invests.

Treatment, Care and Support

Together with PEPFAR and other partners, we are making significant progress toward reaching WHO’s “treat all” guidance and the UNAIDS “95-95-95” strategy. Those efforts have significantly increased the number of people living with HIV who know their HIV status, the number of people on antiretroviral therapy and the number of people on antiretroviral therapy who have a suppressed viral load (when the amount of HIV in a person’s blood becomes so low that it is undetectable). In 2022, the number of people on antiretroviral therapy in Global Fund-supported countries rose to 78%, and 72% of people living with HIV had a suppressed viral load.

We also support multimonth dispensing of prevention, care and treatment products (over three months of medicine at a time), as well as community programs for antiretroviral therapy delivery, adherence support, community leadership, engagement and treatment literacy.

Prevention

The Global Fund has steadily increased investments in HIV prevention, from US$705 million over the 2018-2020 period to more than US$850 million over the 2021-2023 period. We are also investing more in high-impact prevention measures such as HIV self-testing, condoms and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Between 2021 and 2023, the Global Fund is investing more than US$140 million in condom programs – representing 17% of our HIV prevention budget.

As well as these investments, we support countries to focus their efforts on locations where HIV is most prevalent and on people with the greatest HIV prevention needs – key populations and adolescent girls and young women, and their sexual partners – so they have the tools, knowledge and power to protect themselves from acquiring HIV. We also work with partners to make HIV prevention options more accessible in the spaces where people need rapid access to them. By investing in community-led monitoring, we support communities affected by HIV to monitor the accessibility, quality, acceptability and affordability of health services, so that these services are integrated and centered around the people who use them.

Adolescent girls and young women continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV. We have significantly increased our investments for this group, focusing on the 13 priority countries where HIV burden is highest. In 2022, 2.5 million adolescent girls and young women were reached with HIV prevention programs in these 13 countries.

One crucial strategy in the battle against HIV is preventing transmission from mothers to babies. In countries where the Global Fund invests, in 2022 around 82% of mothers living with HIV received treatment to keep themselves healthy and prevent the virus from infecting their babies, compared to only 47% in 2010.

The Global Fund’s market-shaping strategy has led to enormous savings in antiretroviral drugs, enabling countries to put even more people on treatment.

  • In 2000, a one-year supply of antiretroviral therapy cost more than US$10,000; it can now cost as low as US$47 per year (as of year-end 2022).
  • In 2018, the Global Fund signed multiyear framework agreements with suppliers of HIV medication and saved US$324 million by the end of 2021 and secured the supply of lifesaving drugs for over 4 million people.

Read the Latest Results Report

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Published: 12 September 2022