World AIDS Day 2013: “Getting to Zero: Ending AIDS”

when UNAIDS put forward its vision of " Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths " , the end of AIDS only existed in an aspirational future. Now people are talking concretely about it. In a report released in July 2013 outlining the United Nations Secretary-General's vision for the next global development agenda, Ban Ki-moon called on all countries to 'realize the vision of a future free of AIDS 1. The post-2015 development agenda will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire and will likely set goals for 2030. Meanwhile, the US President unveiled last World AIDS Day (2012) PEPFAR's (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) Blueprint 'Creating an AIDS-free Generation' 2 which sets out a roadmap for US Government action to this end. To bring to the debate a rigorous analysis of the evidence and recommendations for how to achieve the end of AIDS, UNAIDS and The Lancet are co-convening the global Commission: 'Defeating AIDS-Advancing global health'. Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and aims to generate high profile advocacy for ending AIDS as a shared triumph of the post-2015 development agenda. We are convinced that recent rapid progress in the AIDS response indicates that ending AIDS is achievable in the next development era. However, getting to zero will only be possible with the kind of resolve that has marked the AIDS response to date, combined with bold new actions. The notion that ending AIDS can be a tangible development goal demonstrates how far we have come. The Millennium Declaration and the MDGs recognize that reversing the global HIV epidemic is a key indicator of, and instrumental to, progress in development. Building on the strength of the AIDS movement, MDG 6 fuelled the scaling up of national AIDS responses, resulting in significant results. Since 2001, the number of people newly infected with HIV each year has been reduced by 20 per cent, thanks to a combination of biomedical, behavioural and structural prevention strategies. Access to antiretroviral therapy now reaches over 8 million people-more than half the people in low-and middle-income countries who are eligible for it, and 20 times greater than the number on treatment in 2003 3. Resources mobilised for the AIDS response in low-and middle-income countries have increased more than tenfold since 2001 4. Rapid advances in science over the last three years, including the development of microbicides for women and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis, combined …