UNAids chief ‘shaken and disgusted’ by US cuts that will mean millions more deaths

Winnie Byanyima at the UN funding conference in Seville. She says Pepfar constituted 60% of her budget. Photograph: Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters

The head of the global agency tackling Aids says she expects HIV rates to soar and deaths to multiply in the next four years as a direct impact of the “seismic” US cuts to aid spending.

Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAids, said that if the funding permanently disappeared, the world faced an additional 6 million HIV infections and 4 million Aids-related deaths by 2029.