Speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, Gates said the world was at a crossroads, with millions of children at risk of dying if funding drops too steeply.

The Gates Foundation’s pledge matches its donation in 2022. That was the last time the Global Fund, a Geneva-based independent nonprofit, raised money on its three-year budget cycle. The announcement follows deep aid cuts from governments around the world, led by the United States.

“A kid born in northern Nigeria has a 15% chance of dying before the age of 5. You can either be part of improving that or act like that doesn’t matter,” Gates said in an interview before the foundation’s annual Goalkeepers event in New York on Monday.

The event celebrates and seeks to accelerate progress on United Nations global development goals set for 2030, including improving health and ending poverty.

“I am not capable of making up what the government cuts, and I don’t want to create an illusion of that,” he said about his pledge.

The Gates Foundation, the philanthropy started by the Microsoft co-founder and his then-wife in 2000, is one of the world’s biggest funders of global health initiatives, with a particular focus on ending preventable deaths of mothers and babies, tackling infectious diseases and lifting millions out of poverty.

Earlier this year, Gates pledged to give away almost his entire $200 billion fortune by 2045, more quickly than planned because of the urgent need worldwide.

Millions More Could Be Saved

According to the U.S.-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, global development assistance fell by 21% between 2024 and 2025 and is now at a 15-year low.

That could still change, said Gates, with organizations like the Global Fund trying to raise money before the end of the year. But if the trajectory remains the same, progress that cut child mortality in half since 2000, saving 5 million lives a year, could be in jeopardy, he said in a statement.

Gates said that there was still an opportunity to save millions of lives and end some of the deadliest childhood diseases by the time he will have donated the rest of his fortune in 2045.

That would require maintaining funding for institutions like the Global Fund as well as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, prioritizing primary healthcare and rolling out innovations – such as the long-acting HIV prevention drug lenacapavir – quickly.

“What’s happening to the health of the world’s children is worse than most people realize, but our long-term prospects are better than most people can imagine,” Gates said in a statement.

At the Goalkeepers event, the foundation gave Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez its annual Global Goalkeeper Award. While other countries reduced global health support, Spain increased its donations to the Global Fund this year by 12% and Gavi by 30%.

The Goalkeepers event usually involves publication of a progress report on the U.N. sustainable development goals, originally adopted in 2015. But that has been delayed until an event in Abu Dhabi in December, when global health funding will be clearer, the foundation said.

It’s no longer a death sentence.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks white blood cells, leaving you vulnerable to even minor infections. The term HIV is sometimes and incorrectly used interchangeably with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

AIDS is the result of long-term untreated HIV, and despite being called late-stage HIV or advanced HIV disease, Avert chronicles explained how AIDS was discovered first.

This was in 1981 when supposedly healthy individuals were diagnosed with a serious infection that typically happens to the severely immunosuppressed. In 1983, scientists were able to pinpoint HIV as the virus that caused AIDS.

In those days, being diagnosed with HIV was a death sentence — it was novel and incurable. However, following scientific advancements, people with HIV can now have long and normal lives with proper treatment. The first HIV drug, zidovudine, became available only in 1987. While it was a failed cancer drug from the 1960s, it proved able to block the proteins that HIV needed to spread inside the body. However, having only one drug meant the virus could mutate so the medication would eventually be rendered ineffective.

The 1990s saw a wave of new kinds of drugs — such as saquinavir, which stops the virus from copying itself, and combination pills, which contained two anti-HIV drugs. As of present writing, there are at least 30 HIV medications that people can take to effectively manage the virus. Below is a quick rundown of the classifications:

Combination Pills

First on this list is the combination pills, which are actually the most commonly prescribed drugs for people with HIV. These were invented because people often quit their HIV treatment because they had to take multiple pills a day — combination pills made it easier for people to stick to the treatment. Most combination pills out there contain three or more anti-HIV drugs, such as Triumeq and Genvoya.

A study on Wiley Online Library says that these remain the standard as they reduce mortality by lowering the number of resistant mutations. However, those who can’t tolerate or afford three-drug pills can still opt for two-drug pills like Combivir.

Nucleoside/Nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs)

NRTIs keeps HIV from multiplying by preventing it from correctly copying its RNA into DNA. The previously-mentioned zidovudine falls under this kind of anti-HIV drug. It’s worth noting that some NRTIs, on their own or in combination with other medications, are referred to as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) medicines.

SymptomFind features these two in their health guide on HIV, explaining that PrEP pills like Truvada can protect you from getting HIV as long as you take it before you potentially get exposed to the virus. Taking this drug daily will lower your chances of getting it. Meanwhile, PEP medicines like Retrovir are taken as soon as possible after potential exposure to HIV. These can usually prevent you from being infected, though they must be used within 72 hours of the exposure and continued for 28 days.

Protease Inhibitors (PIs)

HIV uses the enzyme protease to replicate itself. As the name of these drugs suggests, PIs block the actions of protease so HIV can’t multiply. Saquinavir, the first anti-HIV drug after zidovudine is one such drug. While these might seem effective, using single-agent PIs may result in drug-resistant HIV. To prevent this, and to make the drugs fully effective, they’re used in combination drugs, such as Evotaz. There are combination pills that contain only PIs, such as Kaletra (having lopinavir and ritonavir), but they’ll still need to be taken with other anti-HIV pills.

Interestingly, a previous article we wrote on WHO drug trials talks about how Kaletra was also initially used in COVID-19 trials due to the similarities of the viruses. But it was discontinued when the drugs failed to reduce mortality.

HIV treatment has improved greatly since the first anti-HIV drug. Proper treatment will enable those with HIV to live a full and typical life. It’s no longer a death sentence.

For more news and health related information do read our other articles here at Milli Chronicle.

There has been a steady increase in HIV transmission rates through unprotected sexual intercourse, rather than intravenous drug use.

A Czech-based Persian cum English Radio broadcasting service Radio Farda published a detailed analysis about the increase of AIDS/HIV disease among Iranians due to unprotected sex and excessive drug addiction.

Following is the report taken without any manipulation:

Despite the government’s pledge to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, the number of individuals suffering from AIDS/HIV in Iran has been steadily rising.

According to a 2016 survey by the United Nations, there were roughly 5000 new infections between the years 2010 and 2016, adding up to the total of 66 thousand people living with HIV. However, some estimates claim that there may be over 100 thousand Iranians suffering from HIV, highlighting significant discrepancies between official statistics and reality.

The AIDS epidemic in Iran has a significant drug-related dimension. Being part of the Golden Crescent, a region spanning Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan with prominent illicit opium production, Iran has served as a pathway for drug traffickers in the shipping of narcotics from Afghanistan to Europe.

While the Iranian government does not treat drug trafficking lightly, the illegal drug trade has fueled the country’s growing problems with drug addiction.

According to a survey carried out by the Iranian Drug Control Organization, there are about 2.8 million Iranians who regularly use narcotics. Out of those, roughly 67 percent take heroin as their primary drug.

The widespread availability of heroin and other opiates, which are often taken intravenously, has served as an important vector spreading AIDS/HIV among drug addicts, with UN statistics claiming that 9.3 percent of Iranian drug addicts currently have HIV.

While there have been efforts undertaken by the government to promote the use of clean needles and other practices targeting the spread of AIDS/HIV among drug users, the country’s policy against addicts has sometimes been called a “vicious cycle”.

According to Mohammad Bakhshandeh, the chief of the Drug Police of Greater Tehran, the problem is largely caused by ineffective policies which treat drug addicts as criminals, rather than victims of addiction.

“If we have accepted the fact that addicts are not criminals and consider them as sick individuals, we should also accept that it is the duty of municipal and health departments to look after them, not the police’s,” Bakhshandeh said. In turn, HIV has entered Iranian prisons, with roughly 1 percent of Iran’s prisoners now suffering from HIV.

However, more than ever before, there has been a steady increase in HIV transmission rates through unprotected sexual intercourse, rather than intravenous drug use. This is not limited only to Iranian sex workers, where up to 2 percent of all sex workers suffer from HIV, but to the younger generation in general.

Indeed, whereas about 70 percent of sex workers suffering from HIV know their status, only 41 of the general population suffering from HIV are aware of their condition. Similarly, the country’s treatment services have also delivered lackluster results, with only 13 percent of HIV-positive individual having suppressed viral loads as part of treatment.

This has been particularly problematic for the younger generation. According to Parvin Afsar Kazerouni, the head of the Health Ministry’s AIDS department, more than 50 percent of HIV patients in Iran are between 21 and 35.

Although the government continues to blame illegal drug use as the chief source of HIV transmission, unprotected sexual intercourse is becoming a significant factor.

This can be partly explained through the lack of sexual education program offered to Iran’s youth, with only 18 percent of Iranian youth aged between 15-24 knowing about HIV prevention.

The government’s inability to provide well-rounded sexual education to its young population highlights an equally difficult challenge to the regime’s fundamentalist character.

While drug addiction and prostitution continue to be deemed as “social problems”, the ostracized nature of HIV-positive individuals in the general public presents an immensely problematic issue, which effectively prevents the possibility to educate individuals on HIV and living with an HIV-positive status.

In turn, this ineffective policy may lead to the further spread of this disease, particularly to at risk group such as gay men who already retain a highly stigmatized position in Iranian society, as well as to other segments of the Iranian population.

According to a 2016 survey by the United Nations, there were roughly 5000 new infections between the years 2010 and 2016, adding up to the total of 66 thousand people living with HIV. However, some estimates claim that there may be over 100 thousand Iranians suffering from HIV, highlighting significant discrepancies between official statistics and reality.

The AIDS epidemic in Iran has a significant drug-related dimension. Being part of the Golden Crescent, a region spanning Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan with prominent illicit opium production, Iran has served as a pathway for drug traffickers in the shipping of narcotics from Afghanistan to Europe.

While the Iranian government does not treat drug trafficking lightly, the illegal drug trade has fueled the country’s growing problems with drug addiction.

According to a survey carried out by the Iranian Drug Control Organization, there are about 2.8 million Iranians who regularly use narcotics. Out of those, roughly 67 percent take heroin as their primary drug.

The widespread availability of heroin and other opiates, which are often taken intravenously, has served as an important vector spreading AIDS/HIV among drug addicts, with UN statistics claiming that 9.3 percent of Iranian drug addicts currently have HIV.

While there have been efforts undertaken by the government to promote the use of clean needles and other practices targeting the spread of AIDS/HIV among drug users, the country’s policy against addicts has sometimes been called a “vicious cycle”.

According to Mohammad Bakhshandeh, the chief of the Drug Police of Greater Tehran, the problem is largely caused by ineffective policies which treat drug addicts as criminals, rather than victims of addiction.

“If we have accepted the fact that addicts are not criminals and consider them as sick individuals, we should also accept that it is the duty of municipal and health departments to look after them, not the police’s,” Bakhshandeh said. In turn, HIV has entered Iranian prisons, with roughly 1 percent of Iran’s prisoners now suffering from HIV.

However, more than ever before, there has been a steady increase in HIV transmission rates through unprotected sexual intercourse, rather than intravenous drug use. This is not limited only to Iranian sex workers, where up to 2 percent of all sex workers suffer from HIV, but to the younger generation in general.

Indeed, whereas about 70 percent of sex workers suffering from HIV know their status, only 41 of the general population suffering from HIV are aware of their condition. Similarly, the country’s treatment services have also delivered lackluster results, with only 13 percent of HIV-positive individual having suppressed viral loads as part of treatment.

This has been particularly problematic for the younger generation. According to Parvin Afsar Kazerouni, the head of the Health Ministry’s AIDS department, more than 50 percent of HIV patients in Iran are between 21 and 35.

Although the government continues to blame illegal drug use as the chief source of HIV transmission, unprotected sexual intercourse is becoming a significant factor.

This can be partly explained through the lack of sexual education program offered to Iran’s youth, with only 18 percent of Iranian youth aged between 15-24 knowing about HIV prevention.

The government’s inability to provide well-rounded sexual education to its young population highlights an equally difficult challenge to the regime’s fundamentalist character.

While drug addiction and prostitution continue to be deemed as “social problems”, the ostracized nature of HIV-positive individuals in the general public presents an immensely problematic issue, which effectively prevents the possibility to educate individuals on HIV and living with an HIV-positive status.

In turn, this ineffective policy may lead to the further spread of this disease, particularly to at risk group such as gay men who already retain a highly stigmatized position in Iranian society, as well as to other segments of the Iranian population.

Article first published on RadioFarda