AVAC Commemorates World AIDS Day

Dear Advocate, 

This World AIDS Day we at AVAC are reflecting on remarkable gains and increasing threats to progress against AIDS. Our latest issue of PxWire, tracking trends in research, development and delivery of HIV prevention options, speaks to this important progress:  

• Global initiations of oral PrEP surpassed 5 million in 2023.  
• Studies to implement the monthly dapvirine vaginal ring and the two-month injectable cabotegravirfor PrEP are ongoing in 22 countries, and we’ll see a 40% increase in doses of CAB available for these studies through 2025. 
• The HIV prevention pipeline continues to evolve with new trials and an agenda for the researchenterprise that leverages insights from recent trials.
• Five countries have reached the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets with more than 29 million peopleaccessing treatment, and global incidence continuing to decline – in some places, among some populations. 

However, as we look to 2024, all these gains could be imperiled by political and financial choices facing leaders today.  

• Will the US Congress recognize the unparalleled success of PEPFAR and safeguard its funding through a clean 5-year reauthorization?  
• Will global health stakeholders coordinate and commit to a new paradigm in delivering HIV prevention, one that will support the rollout of any option for HIV prevention and beyond?  
• Will health officials and policy makers embrace the Choice Manifesto, created by HIV advocates and adopted by UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, calling for the essential investments that will bring these diverse options to the communities that need them most?  
• Will champions for democracy, civil rights and evidence-based unite against a tide of increasing criminalization and persecution of the LGBTQ+ population?  

The answers to these questions will require donors and political leaders to do the right thing, and it will depend on us, a global movement of advocates with a track record of world-changing achievements, to stay the course and build the road to reach everyone one of these goals. Below are a few key resources to support your work. 

At AVAC, we believe it’s up to all of us to make sure the world does not squander another decade in slow, fragmented rollout of life-saving innovation in HIV prevention or risk underfunding research and development. If we work together to build equity into the rollout of options that exist already and support the promise of expanding choices in the near future, the world will at long last bend the curve of HIV.  

Best,

AVAC