Munya Mandipaza – Executive Director
As we reach the mid-point of the year 2025, the month of June has brought a sobering reminder of the challenges we face globally. We are witnessing an uptick in conflict and instability across several regions, developments that disproportionately impact women, children, and adolescents. Women bear a disproportionate and often overlooked burden of war. In today’s conflict zones, women are not only deliberately targeted through gender-based violence but also suffer intensely from the collapse of vital systems that support their health and wellbeing. The consequences for their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are catastrophic yet routinely sidelined in humanitarian responses. In humanitarian settings these vulnerable groups continue to bear the brunt of disrupted health systems, displacement, and insecurity. The complexities of different types of conflicts demand nuanced attention to the layered ways in which war devastates women’s bodies, autonomy, and futures. The international community must stop treating SRHR in conflict as optional. Women and girls cannot wait for peace before their rights are respected. The social determinants that affect women, children and adolescent health outcomes—poverty, gender inequality, and limited access to services must be addressed head-on if we are to deliver on the promise of health for all.
The 51st G7 summit which was held from 16 to 17 June 2025 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada highlighted several pressing global issues, from conflict and climate change to technological innovation and infrastructure. What was noticeably absent was a focus on how these global shifts are affecting the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents. Economic and political decisions cannot be made in isolation from their human impact. It is imperative that leaders take a more integrated view, one that puts people, and particularly women, children, and adolescents at the centre of global dialogue and decision-making.
INERELA+ welcomes signs of such integration in other fora. The recent BRICS Ministerial Declaration which launched a partnership on socially determined diseases is a promising step towards addressing equity. We commend this initiative and urge that women, children, and adolescent who are often affected by social determinants remain a priority in this work.
Despite marked progress in the HIV response in 2024, the weakening aid, significant and abrupt funding shortfalls in the HIV response in 2025 have triggered widespread disruption across health systems and cuts to frontline health workers thereby halting HIV prevention programmes and jeopardizing HIV treatment services. In Mozambique alone, over 30 000 health personnel were affected. In Nigeria, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) initiation has plummeted from 40 000 to 6000 people per month. People—especially children and key populations are being pushed out of care. Even before the large-scale service disruptions, the reported data for 2024 shows that 9.2 million people living with HIV were still not accessing life-saving treatment services. Among those were 620 000 children aged 0—14 years living with HIV but not on treatment which contributed to 75 000 AIDS-related deaths among children in 2024. In 2024 630 000 people died from AIDS-related causes, 61% of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 210 000 adolescent girls and young women aged 15—24 acquired HIV in 2024, an average of 570 new infections every day. HIV prevention services are severely disrupted. Community-led services, which are vital to reaching marginalized populations, are being defunded at alarming rates. The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) reached 2.3 million adolescent girls and young women with comprehensive HIV prevention services in 2024 and enabled 2.5 million people to use HIV PrEP. Many of these programmes have now stopped completely.
In a time of growing global uncertainty, our shared commitment to equity, health, and rights must remain unwavering. Our call is the international community must come together to bridge the financing gap, support countries to close the remaining gaps in HIV prevention and treatment services, remove legal and social barriers, and empower communities to lead the way forward. We look forward to continuing this journey with all our partners.
Sincerely
Munya Mandipaza – INERELA+ Executive Director