China steps up HIV fight in South Africa amid US funding shortfall

Key topics:China pledges $3.5m for HIV prevention in South Africa.US cuts left $400m gap; South Africa funds 83% of program.Support targets youth, prisoners, and harm-reduction programs..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Janice Kew.China will finance HIV-prevention programs in South Africa for the first time, taking a small step into the massive void left by US funding cuts earlier this year.The agreement to provide $3.5 million over the next two years compares with the roughly $400 million in HIV/AIDS funding to South Africa cut by the Trump administration earlier this year. The country has the world’s largest HIV epidemic, with about 8 million people living with the virus that causes AIDS.The Chinese funding comes as limiting the number of new infections has become increasingly difficult, with adolescent girls and young women disproportionately affected, Winnie Byanyima, executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, said in Pretoria on Thursday.While the US began rolling out new HIV-prevention drug lenacapavir this week to 12 African countries, it’s yet to include South Africa in that plan. The exclusion coincides with a deterioration in relations between Pretoria and Washington since President Donald Trump came to office in January..Read more:.Trump permanently halts healthcare aid to South Africa, sparking HIV crisis.Countries like South Africa “that have significant means of their own,” should be encouraged to fund doses for their own people, Jeremy Lewin, the senior US State Department official for foreign assistance, said Nov. 18. South Africa already funds about 83% of its own HIV program.The Chinese program will help 54,000 adolescents and young people in technical and vocational training colleges across the country, including through providing testing kits and condom vending machines. It will also support 500 people, some in prison, who inject drugs through harm-reduction and opioid-substitution therapy programs.Funding cuts by the US — which for decades led the fight against HIV/AIDS, saving millions of lives — will hamper a plan to end the disease as a public health threat by 2030, Byanyima said earlier this year.The Global Fund — an independent partnership that sources funds mainly from public sector donors — hopes to raise at least $18 billion in its 2026-28 fundraising cycle as it meets in Johannesburg on Friday on the margins of the Group of 20 summit. The success of the exercise will be crucial to expand efforts to combat HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and to strengthen health systems..© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

China steps up HIV fight in South Africa amid US funding shortfall

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