Sub-Saharan Africa Faces Challenges in Responding to AIDS Due to Debt

The United Nations said that sub-Saharan African countries, which account for about 65% of the world’s acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients, are having difficulties responding to AIDS due to worsening financial conditions caused by debt.

The United Nations AIDS Programme (UNAIDS), an AIDS-focused agency under the United Nations, diagnosed in a report that “sub-Saharan countries may face a dangerous shortage of resources to respond to HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), which causes AIDS.”

If these countries fail to urgently reduce their public debt, they will be unable to effectively address their own health problems, which will in turn pose a risk to global health.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s HIV/AIDS Crisis

According to UNAIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is home to 25.9 million people, or 65 percent of the world’s 39.9 million people living with HIV.

The international community has been working with countries in the region to combat AIDS, and has achieved significant results, including a 56 percent reduction in new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa since 2010.

However, UNAIDS analyzed that as the financial conditions of these countries worsened, their ability to respond to diseases decreased significantly.

Debt servicing in Angola, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia is exceeding 50% of government revenues.

Spending on HIV response across Western and Central African countries is projected to fall from an average of 0.3% of GDP in 2017 to 0.12% in 2022.

Call to Action

In order for sub-Saharan countries to respond effectively to the disease, they need to strengthen their tax systems, including by eliminating tax exemptions that currently average 2.6% of GDP, and provide debt relief for creditors and expand support from donor countries.