AVAC in the News

Every Dec. 1, the world commemorates those who have died from an AIDS-related illness. Known as World AIDS Day, it serves as a reminder that there has been an ongoing pandemic for the past 40 years, pre-dating COVID. The COVID vaccines were sequenced, developed and approved in the US in record time, but that would not have been possible without decades of work by HIV researchers.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, said Tuesday the COVID-19 pandemic has diverted scientific and financial resources from the fight against AIDS, seriously impeding global efforts to achieve the UN goal of ending AIDS by 2030.

Despite tremendous advances made in the global HIV response, overall progress in HIV prevention efforts remains too slow to reach the 2030 targets. In 2019 alone, 1.7 million people acquired HIV, three times more than the UNAIDS 2020 target. About 62 percent of the new infections were among key populations, these are men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people and people who inject drugs, and their sexual partners, and one in four new infections in sub-Saharan Africa are among adolescent girls and young women.

We were among the many advocates and global health leaders who called on the Biden Administration to move quickly in naming a permanent head for the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Now that President Biden has selected Dr. John Nkengasong as his nominee, Congress must act swiftly to confirm his nomination and give US global efforts to address HIV – a preventable and treatable disease that still claims nearly 700,000 lives a year around the world, four decades after the first case was discovered – the permanent leadership it needs and deserves.