More than a third of the world’s countries say they are at risk of running out of life-saving AIDS drugs because of disruptions to supply lines and other problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
Twenty-four out of those 73 nations have already reported critically low supplies of the vital antiretroviral drugs, the agency said.
“The findings of this survey are deeply concerning,” the WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement at the start of the International AIDS conference.
The WHO said about 8.3 million HIV-positive people are reliant on the antiretroviral drugs in the 24 worst-hit states – about a third of all people taking HIV treatment globally.
