Coronavirus disruption to HIV treatment could cause 500,000 additional Aids deaths, UN and other agencies warn

About 40 million people worldwide live with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, and rely on life-saving drugs – but the pandemic is interrupting supplies

Covid-19 response casts light on social and economic inequalities and lack of public health investment, agencies say

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A patient suffering from HIV consults their doctor at Tangerang Hospital, Jakarta, in Indonesia. The coronavirus pandemic could cause an additional half a million Aids deaths if treatment continues to be disrupted. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 7:15pm, 7 Jul 2020Updated: 7:15pm, 7 Jul 2020

The coronavirus pandemic could cause an additional half a million Aids deaths if treatment is disrupted long term, the United Nations warned, stressing that years of progress against HIV were in jeopardy.

At the virtual International Aids Conferences, the UN said the world was already way off course in its plan to end the public health threat even before Covid-19.

Although Aids-related deaths have fallen by 60 per cent since the peak of the HIV epidemic in 2004, in 2019 around 690,000 still died from the illness. Around 1.7 million people were infected last year, and there are now close to 40 million people living with HIV worldwide.

The UN’s annual report said that the 2020 target of reducing Aids-related deaths to fewer than 500,000, and new HIV infections to also under 500,000, will now be missed.

Millions of people had died in recent decades despite the existence of effective treatments, it said, calling on the world to learn lessons from the Aids epidemic in its Covid-19 response.