AIDS at a Crossroads

In July, UNAIDS released its 2024 global AIDS report, The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads, providing a status update for ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Although the report highlights progress in significant areas, that progress is “highly uneven.” The report authors state that the success or failure of the global AIDS response will depend on whether or not leaders, community members, and program managers can work together to improve access to HIV services, including cutting-edge treatment and prevention, fully support human rights, and bolster funding, among other goals.

Here’s where we stand:

The report also spotlights the importance of working faster to eradicate stigma, discrimination, social inequalities, and gender-based violence to make HIV prevention and healthcare more accessible. Says Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director, in the report’s welcome message: “I am sometimes asked whether I am an optimist about the HIV response, because the progress we have made shows the path that ends AIDS—or whether I am a pessimist, because restrictions on resourcing and rights are putting progress in danger. The answer is that I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist—I am an activist, because success depends on rising to the moment, on recognizing the urgency of now.”

Click Here to read more from the December 2024 issue of amfAR INNOVATIONS.

---