AIDS charities heads warn of a new HIV emergency

We must not forget the AIDS epidemic as the world focuses on COVID-19, urge Anne Aslett and Christine Stegling

Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the G7 leaders meet this week (Getty Images)

This week, the G7 meets in Cornwall. Top of the agenda is tackling pandemics and as part of this, Boris Johnson is set to urge the group of wealthy nations to commit to vaccinating the world against Covid-19 by the end of next year. This is a bold and ambitious goal – but it isn’t enough – we will need more than pledges to make this a reality.

Ambitious yet plausible goals have been set in the fight to end AIDS too, but the world has fallen significantly behind these goals, as the pledges have not become a reality. We run the risk of the same issue occurring in tackling COVID-19, and for this reason, world leaders in the HIV and AIDS movement want to highlight how the lessons learnt in the fight against AIDS can play a key role in tackling this and future pandemics.

Despite pandemics being top of the summit’s agenda, there is scant recognition in the agenda that the world is managing not one, but a set of pandemics, and that those pandemics can only be beaten together.

One of those pandemics, which turned 40 this month, is the AIDS crisis. In four decades, great strides have been made in HIV prevention and treatment, but this progress hasn’t stopped people from being infected and it hasn’t stopped AIDS related deaths. To date, 33 million people have died and currently, there is a very real danger that new HIV infections and AIDS related deaths could now increase for the first time in decades.

At the summit next week, Boris Johnson and the G7 leaders must acknowledge a simple fact. That the Covid-19 crisis – by shutting down health services, schools and livelihoods - has created the risk of a new AIDS emergency.

This message has come loud and clear from the communities, partners and grassroots organisations which we support. Communities where AIDS is not something associated with the 1980s and 90s, but continues to be a very real presence in people’s lives.

Over the past year, time and time again we have heard of HIV services disappearing, in some cases overnight.  We have heard of teenage girls excluded from the protective environment of schools and pushed into coercive relationships, with a surge in teenage pregnancy corroborating these stories. 

The data may not be showing it yet - unsurprising when the Global Fund, the world’s largest funder of the AIDS response, reports that HIV testing has declined by 41% - but we expect a rise in HIV infections to follow.  Frontline AIDS Rapid Response Fund, with support from the Elton John AIDS Foundation, has provided emergency assistance to hundreds of young gay men and other criminalised populations, who have been baselessly blamed for spreading Covid-19, and locked up in prisons or sent to camps where they are unable to access life-saving HIV treatment.

While battling against this new AIDS emergency, our partners are also playing a critical role in tackling this latest pandemic, adapting their programmes to include Covid-19 prevention and testing and to address the health, social and economic consequences of lockdown.  Often, they say, their governments have approached the Covid-19 crisis with the very same mistakes made in the HIV response - top down, punitive and excluding the community organisations that are such a vital part of tackling any pandemic. 

They want the G7 and other governments to understand this key message. In this acute Covid-19 crisis, in which people with HIV are amongst the most impacted, they are not simply asking governments to stand by their goal of ending AIDS by 2030; they are offering help.

Over four decades, communities, NGOs, health systems and global health institutions have been working together to confront HIV and can be a priceless resource in the fight against other pandemics – bringing delivery mechanisms, community mobilisation, supply chains, laboratory and surveillance capacity, along with forty years of learning and in a time of Covid-19 lockdowns, a new expertise in pivoting to online services.  Governments need to harness and boost investment in this incredible infrastructure in the midst of – and indeed as a core part of its response to Covid-19. This is the call we are hearing again and again from HIV organisations across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Last week, world leaders of the HIV response united with royalty, Lords, and business leaders; besuited former Presidents joined with music, movie and sport stars, to write to Boris Johnson as head of the forthcoming summit with a simple ask:

In the face of this new AIDS emergency, the G7 must recognise and embrace the message from the brilliant, vibrant, talented, wise, grassroots-led HIV movement, telling them this: we, on the frontlines of the fight against HIV, are here to help; recognise our contribution, fund us, harness what we bring. We can help you beat Covid, beat AIDS, and beat the future pandemics to come.

Anne Aslett is CEO of the Elton John AIDS Foundation; and Christine Stegling is CEO of Frontline AIDS