UNAIDS to slash workforce by more than half as funding by US and other big donors disappears

GENEVA – The U.N. bureau that fights HIV plans to slash its workforce by much than fractional and determination galore posts to cheaper locations arsenic a effect of drastic backing cuts from longtime donors successful the United States, Asia and Europe, the bureau and staffers told The Associated Press connected Tuesday.

UNAIDS said “the wide planetary AIDS effect is facing a terrible daze and galore of the gains made successful the past fewer decades are astatine hazard of being reversed.” It said the restructuring follows an autarkic panel's recommendations calling for “downsizing” its secretariat successful Geneva portion continuing to “prioritize the astir indispensable functions.” It said it would support its beingness successful 36 countries.

Drastic U.S. cuts successful assistance nether the existent Trump administration, portion of wider cuts for planetary health, onslaught possibly the biggest stroke ever to the world's efforts to combat HIV.

UNAIDS had previously warned that unless enactment to its HIV efforts are restored soon, much than 6 cardinal further radical could dice successful the adjacent 4 years and an further 2,000 radical per time could go infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

Employees were told astatine an interior municipality hallway Tuesday that unit volition beryllium reduced to astir 280 to 300 from astir 600 currently, participants said.

UNAIDS officials were considering plans to determination galore posts to lower-cost locations wherever it already has offices: successful Bonn, Germany; Nairobi, Kenya; oregon Johannesburg, South Africa — the state with the world's highest fig of AIDS cases, bureau spokesperson Charlotte Sector told the AP.

The bureau was created successful 1996, mostly to code shortcomings successful planetary HIV argumentation by different U.N. wellness agency, the World Health Organization, which continues to partially money UNAIDS.

The United States, nether the 2nd Trump administration, has sharply reduced oregon paused planetary backing and enactment for galore U.N.-related organizations.

In an interview with the AP successful February successful effect to the U.S. cuts, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections could leap much than six times by 2029 if American support of the biggest AIDS programme is dropped. She warned that much resistant strains of the illness could emerge.

Byanyima acknowledged immoderate valid disapproval regarding however HIV assistance has been delivered and called it “an accidental to rethink and make much businesslike ways of delivering life-saving support.”

According to its website, enactment from the United States contributed much than 40% of the UNAIDS halfway programme and non-core activities that totaled astir $214 cardinal successful 2023, the astir caller twelvemonth listed. Other apical contributors included the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

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AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng successful London contributed to this report.

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