The Swedish Aid Response to the HIV Epidemic: An Overview

Summary

In the late 1970s the first cases of a new, unknown disease began to appear, that would quickly develop into one of the modern world’s largest public health and development crises. Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has killed millions of people over four decades, most of them in low- and middle-income countries. It has challenged already weak health systems and haltered economic development in large parts of the world. Approximately 40 million people are living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) today, but with access to proper care, HIV can now be managed as a chronic disease, which is a remarkable achievement by the global public health community.

As the world became exposed to yet another devastating global public health and development crisis, COVID-19, The Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA) commissioned a report on the Swedish aid response to the HIV epidemic. The world will continue to face a variety of health threats in the future, including new pandemics and other challenges such as climate change, conflicts, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and non-communicable diseases. It is essential that we make efforts to learn from previous experiences in responding to health threats. The purpose of this report was to describe the Swedish HIV response over time, distilling what has characterised the response, and what we can learn from that. To our knowledge, there has not been such a comprehensive attempt before.

We hope that this report will find its audience among the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, embassies, Sida and other government agencies, as well as policymakers, civil society organisations and the general public interested in the Swedish aid response to HIV. The study has been conducted with support from a reference group chaired by Julia Schalk.

The authors are solely responsible for the content of the report.