The Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) convened again with the leadership and community in an online meeting on February 27 to share, learn, and jointly identify opportunities for new and innovative strategies to restructure the funding for HIV treatment across the world.
The network noted a growing shift in global priorities as geopolitics turns more nationalistic with the United States of America, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands all announcing aid cuts to realign to domestic priorities.
During the meeting, the leadership of national, regional, and global PLHIV networks sought to learn from countries whose national HIV programs do not rely heavily on external funding on which models for community-led interventions, including advocacy and Community Led Monitoring (CLM) work for them even as they explore alternative sources of funding.
“I think this moment is asking a lot from us; even at GNP+, we are now looking at avenues and approaches that we have never thought of, like venture capitalists and private equity funds.
You can see there is a lot of innovation that is coming domestically from countries in the south,” GNP+ Co-Executive Director Sbongile Nkosi said.
“We have been here before, both during the Covid pandemic and back in 2008 with the credit crunch, where global priorities shifted suddenly. I think this moment has taken us back to when we did not have the resources we needed, but we actually had the resilience and innovation. But I guess the big question we are all struggling with is, where are we going to get the resources?” she said.
The network leadership learned from India, which has relied on the led community pharmacy model providing subsidized access to treatment through partnerships with governments and pharmaceutical companies. India’s model, launched 18 years ago, has grown in scale and coverage, showing such models can be sustainable in the long term.
“In 2006, we started the TAAL community pharmacy when there was no free HIV treatment from the government for affordable and accessible medicine. It has been a journey as TAAL has played a significant role in ensuring that PLHIV access the life-saving treatment even after the government came through; we continued to support people on the second and third lines. Communities have always played a huge role in the HIV response, and we reflect on how we became innovative during Covid by having an online pharmacy to ensure that we have access to treatment as we navigate hard times,” said Manoj Pardesi, Founder and CEO of TAAL pharmacy.
As funding from global partners dries out, country governments, including Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa as shining examples of countries offering supplementary budgets and stepping up to define emergency response to address the gaps experienced due to the stop work order. Last week, South Africa launched the 1.1 million campaign with a bold ambition to put an additional 1.1 million people on treatment and save lives.
While governments and organizations have set up emergency funds to fill in the gaps from this disruption, a lot more needs to be done to entrench these interventions in annual funding cycles and to develop new frameworks for funding treatment.
“The Ministry of Health in Kenya has reached out to us to discuss the idea of integrating HIV services into the general health care, but we realize that we lack two key documents: one in 2021, when we implemented the PLHIV stigma index, there was a recommendation that the Ministry of Health should support developing HIV disclosure guidelines that will help dialogue going forward, and from the stigma index 2024 that we are launching on March 3, 2025, there is also a strong recommendation that there is a need for standard guiding procedures to inform the integration of HIV into general health services.” Nelson Otwoma, ED, NEPHAK
The meeting reaffirmed PLHIV’s commitment to working with governments and global health leaders to achieve the ambition of ending AIDS and keeping people alive. The upcoming UNAIDS-led development of the next Global AIDS Strategy (2026- 2030) and the 2026 UN High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, where member states will adopt the 2026 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS, are key processes in which we hope to participate with a strong local for global PLHIV-led advocacy.
They called on the return to the partnership, policy, and community engagement that created the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV (GIPA), which has been a driving force in the fight against HIV—preventing new infections, advocating for access to ARV treatments, and ensuring care for opportunistic diseases.
“GIPA is not a marketing slogan or a commercial catchphrase. It is a deep-rooted commitment, a cause-driven advocacy for a better quality of life for PLHIV worldwide. GIPA was built by PLHIV across the globe, some of whom are no longer with us, but their legacy remains.” Tariq EL ALAOUI , MENA Community
Last week, GNP+ also released the results from the survey coordinated in collaboration with Aidsfonds and Robert CARR Fund (RCF) to determine the Impact of the USA government administration’s directive to pause all foreign aid obligations on program implementation and funding, which revealed incredible resilience in communities. While the findings show concerns and panic when the aid was cut however, we also learn the antifragility of communities sticking together and innovating. We share the report here and thank our colleagues from Aidsfonds and RCF for their collaboration
“It is now more than ever that it is important we come together with all our diversity as people living with HIV to share learnings, find solutions, and ensure our voices are heard on the global stage. Not as tokenistic involvement brought in to other people’s tables; we can’t wait to be invited to those tables we need to find our own tables and be leading in the response. As people living with HIV, we know what is right for us, we know the solutions, and we can’t wait for action,” GNP+ Board Member Susan Cole said.
Remember to register and join the convening, our next meeting will be on 13th March at 12 pm CET. We ask PLHIV leaders to please register on the Google form here. For more questions, get in touch with us through communities@gnpplus.net
GNP+ is the global network of people living with HIV, led by and for people living with HIV. We strengthen impactful PLHIV-led local for global advocacy and community leadership facilitated by our strong movement building through grant making with country and regional networks of people living with and most impacted by HIV.
MEDIA CONTACT:
FLORENCE RIAKO ANAM | Co-Executive Director
friakoanam@gnpplus.net | +25 472 147 7384 Kenya
