GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. agency that fights HIV plans to slash its workforce by more than half and move many posts to cheaper locations as a result of drastic funding cuts from longtime donors in the United States, Asia and Europe, the agency and staffers told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
UNAIDS said “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.” It said the restructuring follows an independent panel’s recommendations calling for “downsizing” its secretariat in Geneva while continuing to “prioritize the most essential functions.” It said it would maintain its presence in 36 countries.
Drastic U.S. cuts in assistance under the current Trump administration, part of wider cuts for global health, strike perhaps the biggest blow ever to the world’s efforts to fight HIV.
UNAIDS had previously warned that unless support to its HIV efforts are restored soon, more than 6 million additional people could die in the next four years and an additional 2,000 people per day could become infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Employees were told at an internal town hall Tuesday that staff will be reduced to about 280 to 300 from about 600 currently, participants said.
UNAIDS officials were considering plans to move many posts to lower-cost locations where it already has offices: in Bonn, Germany; Nairobi, Kenya; or Johannesburg, South Africa — the country with the world’s highest number of AIDS cases, agency spokesperson Charlotte Sector told the AP.
The agency was created in 1996, largely to address shortcomings in global HIV policy by another U.N. health agency, the World Health Organization, which continues to partially fund UNAIDS.
The United States, under the second Trump administration, has sharply reduced or paused international funding and support for many U.N.-related organizations.
In an interview with the AP in February in response to the U.S. cuts, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections could jump more than six times by 2029 if American support of the biggest AIDS program is dropped. She warned that more resistant strains of the disease could emerge.
Byanyima acknowledged some valid criticism regarding how HIV aid has been delivered and called it “an opportunity to rethink and develop more efficient ways of delivering life-saving support.”
According to its website, support from the United States contributed more than 40% of the UNAIDS core program and non-core activities that totaled about $214 million in 2023, the most recent year listed. Other top contributors included the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
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AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.
