Eswatini fears decades of progress in fight against HIV could be undone by US funding cuts

Africanews (in English)

Eswatini fears decades of progress in fight against HIV could be undone by US funding cuts  The HIV pandemic still claims a life every minute. While progress has been made, there were 1.3 million new HIV infections last year and more than 600,000 AIDS-related deaths. Eswatini has seen new infections drop by 70% since 2010 but US funding cuts have torpedoed prevention and treatment efforts.  READ MORE : http://www.africanews.com/2025/07/10/eswatini-fears-decades-of-progress-in-fight-against-hiv-could-be-undone-by-us-funding-cuts  Subscribe on our Dailymotion channel and receive all the latest news from the continent.    Africanews is available in English and French.  Website : www.africanews.com  Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/africanews.channel/  Twitter : https://twitter.com/africanews

Transcript

00:00Every day at the Luengo clinic here in the small southern african country of Eswatini,

00:05about 350 patients living with HIV come to receive life-saving treatments.

00:11Until recently, US funding covered 80% of the clinic's costs and half of all AIDS programs.

00:19I'm going to actually miss young people coming together and sharing ideas,

00:25especially the livelihood part, and also just having a mobile clinic come nearby your home

00:32just to make your refills for PrEP and art and also get free condoms.

00:38You see, those things really helped MSWATI a lot.

00:42About 3,000 people depend on the clinic for treatment. Now they're in fear for their lives.

00:49We're running around to see how can we ensure that those who are in treatment

00:54First, they must remain on treatment. Make sure that we don't disrupt the services.

00:59Even if we don't have the budget, as I speak, but we need to look for money.

01:05Eswatini has one of the highest rates of HIV prevalence in the world, with one in four people infected.

01:12Prevention programs have seen new infections fall by more than 70% since 2010,

01:18but that could change very quickly.

01:21New infections are likely to rebound. It means that, you know, the investments that we have made

01:26in putting people on treatment is going to be affected. It also means that, you know,

01:32we are not going to be able to generate the strategic information that is needed to inform us

01:38in terms of where are the new infections taking place, who are being infected, why are they being infected,

01:44and how many of them are getting infected. This is the kind of value that the UN has, you know,

01:50bring into the HIV response.

01:52Without US funding, Eswatini is bracing for a rise in new infections and deaths.

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