World AIDS Day 2015 comes at a watershed moment in the fight for the health of people living with HIV and for the health of all the citizens of this planet. The two are intimately related: HIV has, for the last three decades, defined the landscape of ambitious, collaborative and innovative responses that marry science, rights, community-based responses and structural change. Ultimately, these responses can be leveraged to improve health everywhere, but only if we continue to make real progress in battling HIV.
In recent years, collaborations between research teams and thousands of volunteers in clinical trials have yielded insights into how to use HIV prevention and treatment options to end the epidemic. These insights have led to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) “Fast-Track” approach to ending the epidemic, which sets ambitious targets for a range of interventions, including 27 million voluntary medical male circumcisions by year 2020, three million people on daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) annually, major reductions in violence against women, improvements of human rights and, of course, the 90-90-90 targets for 2020: 90 percent of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status, 90 percent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy (ART) and 90 percent of all people receiving ART will have viral suppression.
The world has gotten this far because of massive investments in the HIV response. To actually end the epidemic, though, it is imperative that we resist complacency, cutbacks in funding and a sense that, on any level, our work is done.
Over the last 15 years, the Millennium Development Goals guided the global response to development. Health, including controlling HIV, figured prominently in these goals. In September, the members of the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will guide policy and funding for ending poverty everywhere over the next 15 years. Health is one of 17 goals. To meet it, funders, implementers and country governments will need to be smarter with investments in HIV/AIDS. This means working side by side with people living with and most affected by HIV to develop rights-based approaches and efficient and community-supported service delivery models. And, it means thinking beyond any single health issue and toward integrated approaches that both fight HIV and contribute to ending poverty, hunger and inequality.