Nigeria’s HIV prevention efforts are facing a troubling setback, with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) revealing that condom distribution in the country has crashed by 55 per cent in just one year.
The figure appeared in UNAIDS’ 2025 World AIDS Day report, Overcoming Disruption, Transforming the AIDS Response, which paints a stark picture of global progress slipping dangerously off track.
According to the agency, HIV prevention, testing and community-led services have been heavily disrupted across several regions. In 13 countries, the number of people newly placed on treatment has dipped, while hundreds of thousands are losing access to vital support networks.
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 450,000 women can no longer rely on “mother mentors”— community health workers who play a crucial role in linking pregnant women and new mothers to lifesaving HIV services.
UNAIDS blamed the reversal of progress on abrupt funding cuts and what it described as a deteriorating human rights climate in dozens of countries.
“The funding crisis has exposed the fragility of the progress we fought so hard to achieve,” UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, said during the launch in Geneva on Tuesday.
“Behind every data point in this report are people,” she stressed. “Babies missed for HIV screening, young women cut off from prevention support, and communities suddenly left without services and care. We cannot abandon them.”
Even before the current disruptions, adolescent girls and young women were already bearing the heaviest burden, with 570 new HIV infections every day among females aged 15 to 24. UNAIDS warns that dismantled prevention programmes are leaving them even more exposed.
Community-led organisations—long regarded as the backbone of HIV outreach—are also being stretched thin. More than 60 per cent of women-led groups say they have been forced to suspend essential services.
Modelling by UNAIDS suggests that if prevention efforts are not restored, the world could face 3.3 million additional new HIV infections between 2025 and 2030.
International financial support is shrinking at a worrying pace. Projections by the OECD indicate that external health funding may drop by 30 to 40 per cent in 2025 compared with 2023, a blow expected to hit low- and middle-income countries the hardest.
“The impact has been immediate and severe, especially in low- and middle-income countries highly affected by HIV,” the report noted.
UNAIDS urged global leaders to recommit to collective action, echoing promises made at the recent G20 Summit in South Africa.
The agency called for sustained—and increased—funding for HIV programmes, particularly in nations that rely heavily on international assistance.
It also appealed for stronger investment in innovation, including more affordable long-acting prevention tools, and renewed emphasis on protecting human rights and empowering community-led responses—priorities UNAIDS says are essential to ending AIDS.
“This is our moment to choose,” Byanyima said. “We can allow these shocks to undo decades of hard-won gains, or we can unite behind the shared vision of ending AIDS. Millions of lives depend on the choices we make today.”
