When Senegal’s parliament approved one of Africa’s most punitive anti-LGBT laws in March 2026, advocates for people living with HIV feared the worst. Their concerns are now being confirmed. New data suggests that access to testing, treatment, and prevention services for vulnerable populations has collapsed, threatening to unravel one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most celebrated HIV response programmes.
The new law, which imposes sentences of up to ten years in prison for same-sex relations, has created what health workers describe as a “climate of terror” around any engagement with sexual health services.
A Public Health Crisis Built on Prejudice
A 2024 study published in the journal AIDS estimated that male key populations accounted for up to 79 percent of HIV transmissions in Senegal between 2012 and 2022. Reaching these populations with prevention and treatment services was never straightforward. The new law has made it dramatically worse.
“We fear the epidemic will return,” said one Senegalese health worker with more than fifteen years of experience, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Everything we built over two decades is all at risk now.”
The Targeting of Community Health Workers
The law has not only affected LGBT individuals. Several community health workers and peer educators who ran programmes targeting key populations have been arrested or detained, according to Human Rights Watch.
“They arrested our programme coordinator two weeks ago,” said one activist based in Dakar. “The charges were ‘promoting homosexuality.’ His work was entirely about HIV prevention. He was trying to save lives.”
International Health Implications
Senegal was widely praised for its HIV response throughout the 2010s. The country achieved remarkable success in expanding access to antiretroviral therapy.
International health organisations are watching the situation with alarm. UNAIDS has issued a statement expressing concern. Several international donor agencies have requested emergency meetings with the government.
The Human Cost
Beyond the statistics, the human cost is becoming apparent. Gay men and other men who have sex with men in Senegal describe living in fear. Several have stopped taking antiretroviral medication rather than risk being seen at a clinic.
A 28-year-old man from Dakar said he had stopped collecting his medication: “I was scared. I saw what happened to people in the news. Now I am running out.”
The epidemic that Senegal worked so hard to contain continues to spread, invisible and unmonitored, in the shadows of criminalisation.