October 24, 2025
This week major shifts in development finance make headlines as do the real-time consequences of the US cuts to foreign aid and withdrawing from the WHO. AVAC’s new issue of PxWire amplifies issues of access, equity, and accountability with an update on biomedical prevention research and rollout.
Rethinking Health Aid
The World Bank‑IMF Annual Meetings wrapped up last week highlighting a critical shift in development finance. African leaders and multilateral agencies signaled a move away from traditional aid models and toward investment‑led growth. They emphasized the need for stronger institutions, locally driven capacity, and private‑sector engagement rather than just grants. At a side event, Dr. Jean Kaseya, Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), stated that up to 60% of the continent’s past foreign health aid may have been largely “wasted” (attributed to fragmentation in the health sector among other things), prompting calls for smarter, more accountable finance for health.
IMPLICATIONS: With traditional aid shrinking and philanthropic models racing to adapt, the world may see healthcare investment shifting as a core aspect of economic development, which may lead to more investment in robust national health systems, supply chains, local research and development, and an expanded workforce to make countries less dependent on external aid. For HIV prevention, this means country ownership, and innovative and sustainable financing must take the lead to ensure that evidence-based programs, services and products reach everyone in need and access is not derailed by donor funding shifts.
READ:
- From aid to investment: Reshaping Africa’s path to growth—Devex
- As aid shrinks, top philanthropies test new ways to spur economic growth—Devex
- Africa CDC chief: 60% of foreign health aid was effectively wasted—Devex
- Africa Seeks More Self-Reliance Amid Disease Outbreaks and Decline in Donor Funds—Health Policy News
Politics Reshaping Global Health
In parallel to the discussion at the World Bank, Politico’s recent piece highlights the implications of the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization and other key multilateral initiatives. This reporting underscores how deeply politics is reshaping global health. The US Administration’s “America First” strategy, combined with steep foreign aid cuts, continues to leave countries grappling with uncertainty over how to sustain essential programs once supported by US funding.
IMPLICATIONS: Many articles this week are showing the health impacts of the upended global health system, with many questioning how the global health community will navigate not only budget cuts but recasting health aid as bilateral, strategic, and conditional rather than universal and humanitarian.
READ:
- Trump is cutting foreign aid. He’s not the only one.—Politico
- The Story of the Unfolding HIV Crises As Seen in Three Countries: Uganda, Thailand and Malawi—Geneva Health Files
- Botswana faces new HIV scare as shortage of medicines deepens—The Mail and Guardian
- National Institutes of Health funding cuts will ‘impact us for years’—NPR
- A Somali Hospital Closed After U.S. Aid Cuts. Fired Employees Reopened It Without Pay.—New York Times
- Ritshidze report spotlights ‘system-wide slide’ in basics for health facility standards after Pepfar cuts—Daily Maverick
Release Critical Global Health Funding!
Partners in Health and others are urging the timely and full disbursement of Global Fund and PEPFAR funding to prevent disease outbreaks, strengthen health systems, and protect vulnerable communities.
Tracking the HIV Prevention Landscape
AVAC’s new issue of PxWire shows the promise of PrEP – across R&D and delivery. Long-acting injectable lenacapavir for PrEP is advancing toward rollout, with the first supplies expected to reach select countries before the end of the year. Simultaneously, this quarter’s issue tracks updates to pricing of existing PrEP products and the launch of Phase 3 trials for a once-monthly prevention pill.
READ:
- PxWire Volume 15, Issue 4—AVAC
- The Promise of PrEP for HIV—Foreign Policy
What We’re Reading
- NEJM and public health group are launching rival to CDC’s MMWR publication—STAT
- Urgent action needed as Treatment Action Campaign highlights 50 percent cut in HIV funding—IOL South Africa
- Are Cabotegravir Injections More Tolerable Than Lenacapavir?—POZ
- Gilead agrees not to raise prices on HIV medicines for state AIDS drug programs—STAT
- CVS Caremark tells AIDS activists Gilead needs to lower the price of its new HIV drug to get on formularies—STAT
- Who should get the first doses of the twice-a-year HIV prevention jab? It could be in 360 clinics by February—Bhekisisa
- Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response – World AIDS Day 2025—UNAIDS
- More Europeans are dying from HIV now than 15 years ago—Aidsmap
- Join the PrEP Revolution: How to Fight for HIV Prevention [VIDEOS]—POZ
- Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections build over a century—STAT
- Can Africa’s drug regulators be both fast and trusted?—Devex
New & Updated AVAC Resources
- PxWire Volume 15, Issue 4
- Source of Programmatic Cabotegravir for PrEP Supply
- Source of Lenacapavir for PrEP Supply to Early Adopter Countries
- EXPrESSIVE Phase 3 Trials Countries of MK-8527
- Years Ahead in HIV Prevention Research: Time to Market
- Lenacapavir Implementation Studies
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