On the occasion of this year's World AIDS Day on December 1st, Action against AIDS publishes together with the Global Fund Advocates Network (GFAN) videos and interviews with three activists from the Global South. Eduora Ogechuku from Nigeria, Priscilla Amo-Addo from Ghana and Krystal Burungi from Uganda give an insight into their personal experiences with HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, their hope for the implementation of the human right to health for all and their work against prejudice, stigmatization and criminalization.

The activists talk about the plight of marginalized groups, such as homosexual men, LGBTIQ communities, drug users, sex workers, but also children, girls and young women and their experiences with barriers to accessing the care system.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria plays a particularly important role in achieving health equity. It is an elementary component of its work that the Global Fund's programmatic orientation is based on the needs of particularly neglected groups and on human rights principles.

“The motto of this year's World AIDS Day 2024 is 'take the rights path'. The motto could hardly be better chosen. Adhering to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and promoting the inclusion of all communities is essential to ending AIDS,” says Klaus Koch, board member of Action against AIDS. “Our interviews impressively illustrate the urgent need to abolish criminal laws that are detrimental to people's rights,” adds Koch.

One person still dies every minute from AIDS-related illnesses

According to the latest data from UNAIDS, 39.9 million people are currently living with HIV, 9.3 million of whom still have no access to life-saving treatment. Last year, 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses and 1.3 million people around the world were newly infected with HIV. In at least 28 countries, the number of new HIV infections is on the rise. To contain the pandemic, life-saving programs must be accessible to all who need them without fear.

The Global Fund's 8th Replenishment Conference will take place next year. The Global Fund partnership has saved 65 million lives since its inception in 2002. In 2023 alone, 25 million people were treated with life-saving HIV therapies. The interviews impressively demonstrate the Global Fund's strong role in achieving health equity.

We expect the old and the new German government to live up to their responsibility and continue to actively support the Global Fund. Only in this way can the end of AIDS as a threat to public health be achieved by 2030.

In the proposed federal budget for 2025, EUR 1 billion has been earmarked to finance the work of the Global Fund over the next three years.

This is 200 million euros less than at the last replenishment conference and is nowhere near enough.

We would like to thank Eduora Ogechuku, Priscilla Amo-Addo and Krystal Burungi for their testimonies and look forward to them being used for World AIDS Day!

• Feature Krystal Burungi from Uganda/German: https://shorturl.at/uw9AL
• Feature Krystal Burungi from Uganda/English: https://tinyurl.com/4s2w22ta
• Feature Pricilla Amo Addo/Ghana/German: https://shorturl.at/Zi1CA
• Feature Pricilla Amo Addo/Ghana/English: https://shorturl.at/UDNlS
• Feature Eudora Ogechuku from Nigeria/German: https://shorturl.at/KuEhn
• Feature Eudora Ogechuku from Nigeria/English: https://shorturl.at/Gkz6v
• Video Krystal:   https://youtu.be/-2VfalCk7bM
• Video Priscilla:  https://youtu.be/Tdr6awPdics
• Video Eudora: https://youtu.be/gDpAU8MmxUI
• Playlist:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...

Many thanks to our colleagues from the Global Fund Advocates Network (GFAN) for establishing the contacts to their speakers and the joint realization of the project, to Axel Schock for creating the sensitive texts and to our filmmaker Alexej Stoljarov, without whom this project would hardly have been possible in such a short time!

• Press release World AIDS Day 2024