LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Funding to fight HIV among gay and bisexual men and transgender women is a fraction of what it should be, researchers said on Tuesday, with advocates blaming stigma for the shortfall. Gay and bisexual men account for about one in five new HIV infections, but they were only allocated 1% of the $57 billion in global donor funding to treat the virus and combat its spread between 2016 and 2018, Dutch HIV charity Aidsfonds found. And while trans people represented about 1% of new global HIV infections in 2018, programmes targeting them received just 0.06% of the total pool – most of which is channelled to the general population in 135 lower- and middle-income countries. The fight against HIV/AIDS could be set back by a decade by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted treatment and testing services, the United Nations said earlier this year. Advocates for people living with HIV said health programmes needed to better target high-risk groups, including sex workers and their clients and people who inject drugs.