US President Donald Trump announced the freeze on his first day in office in January as part of a review into government spending.
“Disruptions to HIV programmes could undo 20 years of progress,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned.
It could also lead to more than 10 million additional cases of HIV and three million HIV-related deaths, he added, noting this was “more than triple the number of deaths last year”.
Nigeria, Kenya, Lesotho, South Sudan, Burkina Faso and Mali – as well as Haiti and Ukraine – would run out of live-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) medicines in the coming months, Dr Tedros said at a press conference on Monday.
Trump’s executive order paused foreign aid support for an initial duration of 90 days in line with his “America First” foreign policy.
It has affected health programmes around the world, leaving shipments of critical medical supplies, including HIV drugs, greatly hampered.
The majority of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) programmes have since been terminated. (BBC News).