Media Home
UN Web TV
UN Audiovisual Library
UN PhotoUN / HIV AIDS PRESSER
STORY: UN / HIV AIDS PRESSER
TRT: 4:56
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 14 MAY 2026, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior, United Nations Headquarters
14 MAY 2026, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS:
“We are at a perilous moment in the global AIDS response. Decades of progress are now at risk because the world is pulling back just when we need to push forward.”
“Prevention services have collapsed. Treatment expansion has stalled. Community organizations were the backbone of the response are being forced to shut their doors. I'll give you some examples of immediate and devastating impacts. In Uganda, Prep, which is a prevention tool, its uptake fell by 31 percent in just nine months between December 2024 and September of 2025. In Burundi, it fell by 64 percent in the same period. Even the most basic prevention tools are slipping out of reach. In Nigeria, for example, condom distribution fell by 55 percent in just three months from December 2024 to March 2025.”
4. Wide shot, press briefing room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS:
“And the human cost is unbearable. In 2024, at our last count of UNAIDS, 570 girls and young women were infected by HIV every day of that year, 570 girls. And yet, our count is that 60 percent of women led HIV organizations have lost their funding or shut down completely. People most at risk are being abandoned.”
6. Wide shot, press briefing room
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS:
“At the same time, we are witnessing a coordinated global pushback on human rights, the very rights that make progress against HIV possible - gender equality, sexual reproductive health and rights, the rights of LGBTQ people are under attack in many parts of the world. But this is not accidental. It is organized. It's well funded. It is geopolitical. It is proxy wars for critical minerals, for energy, for influence that are being fought instrumentaling the rights of the most marginalized people away from people.”
8. Wide shot, press briefing room
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS:
“Science is offering us solutions that could end this epidemic by 2030. Long-acting prep, long-acting prevention. Long-acting treatments, medicines that we would not have thought about ten years ago. All this is there. But the sudden cut in funding, plus the pushback on human rights, is pulling us away from achieving the end of AIDS.”
10. Wide shot, press briefing room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS:
“It is at that meeting that governments will be recommitting to a progressive, actionable political declaration to steer the world in the right direction, setting ambitious targets for 2030, a direction that could save millions of lives and end AIDS as a public health threat. Today, there are 9.3 million people living with HIV waiting to get on treatment. We must get them on. At the last count, we had 1.3 million new infections in 2024. We must stop new infections, and it's possible.”
12. Wide shot, press briefing room
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Micheal Ighodaro, Executive Director of Global Black Gay Men Connect (GBGMC):
“If I stop taking my medications right now, I could literally die. I will have no future. That is the same for many people around the world. So the AIDS response is not over. We have so much more to fight for. And this is really what this HLM and what civil society are coming in to this conversation with, to ensure that Member States and the world realizes that we don't have a cure. We have amazing science. We have long-acting prevention treatment, but we don't have a cure. So we have so much more to do. We have structural barriers. We have human rights barriers across different sectors.”
14. Wide shot, press briefing room
Executive Director of UNAIDS Winnie Byanyima told reporters, “we are at a perilous moment in the global AIDS response. Decades of progress are now at risk because the world is pulling back just when we need to push forward.”
Byanyima and Nigerian-born advocate for LGBTQI+ rights Micheal Ighodaro briefed reporters today (14 May) on the Interactive Multi-Stakeholder Hearing for the 2026 High-level Meeting on HIV/AIDS. The General Assembly will convene a high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS on 22 and 23 June 2026 at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The UNAIDS chief said that due to funding cuts, “prevention services have collapsed. Treatment expansion has stalled. Community organizations were the backbone of the response are being forced to shut their doors.”
She gave some examples of immediate and devastating impacts. In Uganda, Prep, which is a prevention tool, its uptake fell by 31 percent in just nine months between December 2024 and September of 2025. In Burundi, it fell by 64 percent in the same period. Even the most basic prevention tools are slipping out of reach. In Nigeria, for example, condom distribution fell by 55 percent in just three months from December 2024 to March 2025, Byanyima said.
She highlighted that the human cost is “unbearable,” stating in 2024, at UNAIDS’s last count, 570 girls and young women were infected by HIV every day of that year. “And yet, our count is that 60 percent of women led HIV organizations have lost their funding or shut down completely. People most at risk are being abandoned,” Byanyima added.
The UNAIDS chief also pointed out that the world is witnessing “a coordinated global pushback on human rights, the very rights that make progress against HIV possible - gender equality, sexual reproductive health and rights, the rights of LGBTQ people are under attack in many parts of the world.”
“But this is not accidental” she said, “it is organized. It's well funded. It is geopolitical. It is proxy wars for critical minerals, for energy, for influence that are being fought instrumentaling the rights of the most marginalized people away from people.”
The Executive Director reiterated, “science is offering us solutions that could end this epidemic by 2030,” however the sudden cut in funding, plus the pushback on human rights, “is pulling us away from achieving the end of AIDS.”
Speaking about the upcoming high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS in June, Byanyima said, “it is at that meeting that governments will be recommitting to a progressive, actionable political declaration to steer the world in the right direction, setting ambitious targets for 2030, a direction that could save millions of lives and end AIDS as a public health threat.”
The Executive Director said, “Today, there are 9.3 million people living with HIV waiting to get on treatment. We must get them on. At the last count, we had 1.3 million new infections in 2024. We must stop new infections, and it's possible.”
Micheal Ighodaro is a Nigerian-born advocate for LGBTQI+ rights. He is currently serving as the Executive Director of Global Black Gay Men Connect (GBGMC). Sharing his experience with living with HIV, he said, “if I stop taking my medications right now, I could literally die. I will have no future. That is the same for many people around the world.”
Ighodaro reiterated, “the AIDS response is not over. We have so much more to fight for,” adding that the high-level meeting with the participation of civil society can “ensure Member States and the world realizes that we don't have a cure. We have amazing science. We have long-acting prevention treatment, but we don't have a cure. So we have so much more to do. We have structural barriers. We have human rights barriers across different sectors.”
