Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, knew that 2025 would be an unusual year for the NGO, which provides funds to combat public health threats in low- and middle-income nations. As lenacapavir, which Sands calls “the biggest thing to happen in HIV prevention for a very long time,” became available, cuts to U.S. foreign aid and geopolitical struggles meant that more people than ever were depending on the Global Fund. Thanks to Sands’ and the Global Fund’s efforts, the drug was rolled out at the same time in both rich countries and poor ones; the first doses arrived in Zambia and Eswatini in November. Sands also raised more than $12 billion to replenish the Global Fund in a difficult funding year, and the Fund was one of the few major global health groups in which the Trump Administration continued to invest. “We managed to convey with real hard data that the Global Fund partnership is an extraordinarily effective way of turning donor dollars into human health impact,” Sands says.
