Beginning of the End of AIDS By 2015

2011 marks the 30^th anniversary of the discovery of HIV/AIDS. The world has made incredible progress in its efforts to fight this disease, and 6.6 million people on ARVs today are living proof that programs like PEPFAR and the Global Fund work. Still, we are a long way from declaring victory on AIDS: there are more than 9 million people still in need of treatment, more than 370,000 children are infected with HIV each year, and new infections still outpace those placed on treatment by nearly 2:1.  Global funding for AIDS has fallen flat, and budgetary and political pressures have fostered AIDS fatigue.

We are at a critical inflection point in our fight against AIDS.  A number of game-changing studies and trials over the last 12-24 months are driving new momentum.  These studies have offered exciting new tools in the fight to prevent HIV—including new data that shows treatment works as prevention, reducing the likelihood of passing on HIV by as much as 96%.  They show that bending the curve on AIDS is possible in our generation. 

Now more than ever, we must recommit ourselves to the fight against HIV and to achieving specific, measurable goals that will help us bend the curve of this pandemic.  ONE and our partners want to see a world in which, by 2015:

1. No child is born with HIV

2. The 15 million people who qualify for ARVs are receiving them

3. The rate of new HIV infections is drastically reduced

Though these goals are ambitious, they are all measurable and achievable.  Critically, to bend the curve of the AIDS pandemic, they cannot be achieved in isolation from one another or by only a handful of donors.  Only when achieved in parallel—through the broad support of donors, African governments, organizations, and the private sector—will the beginning of the end of AIDS as a pandemic be real.