Public Health
Progress towards the 2025 targets
The 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030 commits governments to a set of ambitious achievable targets for 2025 that reinforce the evidence-informed targets in the Global AIDS Strategy 2021–2026: End Inequalities End AIDS.
Foreword
This report shows that world leaders can fulfil their promise to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and in so doing prevent millions of AIDS-related deaths prevent millions of new HIV infections and ensure the almost 40 million people living with HIV have healthy full lives. Through powerful case studies and new data the report shows how some countries are already on the right path—and how all countries can get on it.
Executive summary
Midway to the 2025 milestone set at the United Nations General Assembly in June 2021 (1) the global HIV response has moved closer to the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 a commitment enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Progress at the halfway mark to the 2025 milestones
Taking a sustainable HIV response to 2030 and beyond
Ending AIDS as a public health threat is an achievable objective—the knowledge tools and pathways exist for reaching this goal. But in a volatile and evolving context further improvements and constant adaptations are needed so people living with or affected by HIV can live long and healthy lives.
Methods
Every year UNAIDS provides revised global regional and country-specific modelled estimates using the best available epidemiological and programmatic data to track the HIV epidemic. Modelled estimates are required because it is not possible to count the exact number of people living with HIV people who are newly infected with HIV or people who have died from AIDS-related causes in any country. Doing so would require regularly testing every person for HIV and investigating all deaths which is logistically infeasible and ethically problematic. Modelled estimates—and the lower and upper bounds around these estimates—provide a rigorous representation of the HIV pandemic in terms of levels and trends.
UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2024
The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads
The report titled The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads demonstrates the HIV response is at a crossroads: success or failure will be determined by which path leaders take. The report shows that the decisions leaders make this year will determine whether AIDS is ended as a public health threat by 2030. Taking the wrong path by limiting resourcing or clamping down on human rights would lead the pandemic to continue to grow costing millions more lives and undermining global health security.