UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima has called for renewed global solidarity to protect the HIV response, warning that a collapse in international funding has exposed the fragility of the aid model that has long underpinned global health.
Speaking at a Parliamentarians’ breakfast co-organized by the German Federal Ministry of Health, STOPAIDS, the Equality Caucus, UNITE, and UNAIDS, Byanyima urged lawmakers to act decisively to ensure a responsible transition toward sustainable health financing.
“Viruses don’t pay attention to borders. If you do not fight and end a virus in the whole world, it hibernates in another part of the world and comes back to haunt you,” Byanyima said.
She stressed that while the nature of global solidarity may be evolving, the principle itself must remain. “When you withdraw without a plan, people pay with their lives.”
Byanyima urged Members of Parliament to push their governments to increase domestic health financing and place health higher among national priorities.
She also highlighted scientific advances in HIV prevention, such as Gilead’s long-acting PrEP, Lenacapavir, administered twice a year with almost complete protection. These innovations, she said, build on decades of groundbreaking work by South African scientist Caresha, who continues to influence HIV and TB policies nationally and globally.
“Caresha’s life and work are a testament that Africa is not merely an importer of scientific innovations, but home to some of the greatest minds of our era,” Byanyima said. She noted that innovations in HIV prevention, particularly for women, have been shaped by a deep understanding of structural factors.
The pattern of young women being infected by older men—known as the cycle of HIV—combined with gender-based imbalances, migrant labor systems, and apartheid-era inequities in healthcare access, left young women disproportionately vulnerable.
Byanyima praised Caresha’s pioneering leadership at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), where she has spent nearly two decades developing woman-controlled HIV prevention methods.
From her appointment by the Mandela administration in 1995 to co-founding CAPRISA in 2002, Caresha’s work has laid the foundation for modern HIV prevention strategies and continues to shape global treatment guidelines.
“The HIV response has always been underpinned by global solidarity—a value fundamental to our humanity. Today, we must ensure that solidarity continues, because health crises are global, and their solutions must be too,” Byanyima concluded.