In 2019, MSF released a report based on what our teams were witnessing in several countries which illustrated the risks and shortcomings of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) service delivery and gave a reality check on the financial resources available for these diseases worldwide.1 Not only did the findings highlight gaps in diagnosis, prevention and care services, but it underlined the impact of dwindling international resources, increasingly pushing the burden to tackle HIV and TB prematurely onto the shoulders of countries scrambling to mobilize sufficient resources.
Three years later, as the world will convene in September 2022 in New York for the replenishment of the Global Fund (GF) to Fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, one of the main program funders of the fight against the three killer diseases since two decades, the situation has not improved. Worse still, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic combined with escalating social and economic crises, the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria has lost ground and is slipping backwards.
The GF reported that in 2020, for the first time in a decade, there was a rolling back of gains made in all three diseases, with targets missed to keep the world on track to reach the 2030 Global Goals.