Are we actually on a path to ending AIDS?

In a new report, UNAIDS laid out a path for ending AIDS by 2030. The problem, one AIDS activist says, is not just that the world is not on that path, but is actually increasingly deviating from it.

By Andrew Green // 20 July 2023

Is the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS alarmed enough?

UNAIDS issued its global AIDS update last week, spelling out a path toward ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. That path includes strong political leadership, addressing inequities, enabling communities, and civil society organizations to lead the response, and providing sustainable funding to pay for the broader HIV response. The report celebrated significant steps in the decadeslong effort to combat the pandemic, including an annual global number of new infections that have dropped to the lowest level since the late 1980s.

But even as the report champions gains in reduced infections and AIDS-related deaths, which are “bringing the AIDS response closer to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3.3 of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030,” the world remains well short of that target.