EACS 2025: Community declaration highlights HIV care for migrant communities

20 October 2025. Related: Early access, Conference reports, EACS 20 Paris 2025.

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

The community declaration released as part of the EACS 2025 conference focussed on the health difficulties faced by migrants in France and other European countries including in the UK.

High rates of late diagnosis continue to be common with reduced access to services and care.

The declaration calls on governments and the European Union to step up their support for community organisations and to defend policies that put health, solidarity and human rights first.

It is included below and is still open for signatures.

Link to sign declaration.

YouTube video of the declaration.

Protecting rights, preserving health: A call to support communities in the fight against HIV

https://eacs-conference.com/communities-declaration/

Today, the tools exist to bring an end to the HIV epidemic in Europe, where 2.3 million people are living with the virus.

Community-based organisations are a crucial link in this effort: they promote the use of new prevention tools among populations most at risk, and they support people living and ageing with HIV. Their work has also been instrumental in reducing the time between infection and diagnosis among migrants after their arrival in their new country.

At a moment when every effort must be mobilised to complete the last mile towards ending the epidemic, we are witnessing a weakening of community structures in France and, more broadly, cuts to health and social budgets across many countries.

While the dynamics of the epidemic differ between European countries, one constant remains: the time between infection and diagnosis is still too long. In 2023, 52.4% of HIV diagnoses in Europe were late, delaying access to treatment and care. More than 100,000 new HIV diagnoses were recorded that year, 38.1% among people born outside the country in which they were diagnosed. [1]

• In France, new diagnoses rose in 2023, particularly among migrants, nearly half of whom acquired HIV after their arrival. [2]
• Reception conditions for undocumented people significantly increase vulnerability to HIV, especially among women, who face heightened risks of sexual violence. [3]
• Yet increasingly restrictive policies push them further away from prevention and care, while State Medical Aid is questioned year after year.
• Across Europe, migrants face the same challenges: limited resources and legal protections, lack of knowledge of health systems, shortages of interpreters and cultural mediators, and restricted access to both care and residency rights. [4]

As the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has underlined, community involvement in the design and delivery of services is essential to reducing HIV transmission and ensuring timely treatment and retention in care.

For people living in precarious conditions, community-based organisations also address basic needs such as housing and food, while supporting access to rights. Without their action in encouraging testing, promoting prevention, and ensuring access to treatment and retention in care, there is a real risk of an epidemic resurgence in the short term. In addition, the end of U.S. funding, combined with cuts from European countries, poses a major threat in resource-limited settings.

Where human rights are not respected, HIV disproportionately affects the most stigmatised groups. In a global context where rights are increasingly threatened, and where intolerance and exclusion are growing in Europe, marginalised populations are being driven further away from prevention and care. Community-based organisations therefore remain an essential pillar of public health, one that must be safeguarded and reinforced.

On the occasion of the European AIDS Conference in Paris (EACS 2025), as a Legacy project, community-based organisations and other stakeholders committed to ending the epidemic call on governments and the European Union to renew and strengthen their support for community organisations, and to adopt policies that protect the health and dignity of migrants.

Written by the Local Community Committee for EACS Paris 2025.

References

1. HIV/AIDS surveillance in Europe 2024 – 2023 data, ECDC.
2. Surveillance du VIH et des IST bactériennes en France en 2023, Santé Publique France, Octobre 2024.
3. Panetier et al. « Les violences sexuelles envers les femmes immigrées d’Afrique subsaharienne après la migration en France », Population et Sociétés, 2020/5.
4. La santé des réfugiés et des migrants dans la Région européenne de l’OMS, WHO fact-sheets, août 2023.