Nigeria has been listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of eight countries likely to face a shortage of HIV treatment supplies soon.
WHO listed other countries facing the risk to include Haiti, Kenya, Lesotho, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ukraine, saying that these countries could exhaust their supply of HIV treatment in the next few months.
According to the global health agency, the countries now face 10 million additional HIV cases and three million HIV-related deaths.
The alarm by the global health agency followed the freeze in the U.S International Development Agency, USAID funding by Donald Trump’s administration with an over 80 percent cut in multi-year contracts.
The Nigerian government has ramped up intervention on the back of the funding freeze, approving $1 billion for healthcare sector reforms and allocated an additional $3.2 million to procure 150,000 HIV treatment packs over the next four months starting from February.
Despite the interventions by the federal government, the global health agency said Nigeria still faced substantial disruption and could run out of supply soon.
“The disruptions to HIV programs could undo 20 years of progress,” WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a press conference, according to Reuters. He added that this could lead to over 10 million additional HIV cases and three million HIV-related deaths.
Efforts to tackle HIV, polio, malaria and tuberculosis have been impacted by the U.S foreign aid pause implemented by President Donald Trump shortly after he took office in January.
The WHO-coordinated Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network, with over 700 sites worldwide, also faces imminent shutdown, the agency said. This comes at a time when measles is making a comeback in the United States.
The United States has a “responsibility to ensure that if it withdraws direct funding for countries, it’s done in an orderly and humane way that allows them to find alternative sources of funding,” Ghebreyesus said.
Funding shortages could also force 80 percent of WHO-supported essential health care services in Afghanistan to close, the agency said in a separate statement.
As of March 4, 167 health facilities had shut down due to funding shortages, and without urgent intervention, over 220 more facilities could close by June.
The United States’ plan to exit the WHO has also forced the UN agency, which typically receives about a fifth of its overall annual funding from the U.S., to freeze hiring and initiate budget cuts.
The WHO said on Monday that it plans to cut its funding target for emergency operations to $872 million from $1.2 billion in the 2026-2027 budget period.
