At a high-level event on the margin of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York last month, convened with the support of UNAIDS, world leaders agreed that ending the AIDS epidemic as a global threat by 2030 was possible, and should be placed at the centre of health development goals. The brochure, Fast Track (7 pages), sets out the agreed proposals. The context of the agreement is the General Assembly’s discussion of 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2015-2030 to replace the Millenium Development Goals that are due to expire in 2015 – and, more specifically, the formulation of targets to accompany the Sustainable Development Goal for health: “To ensure health lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. The week before the UN General Assembly saw the early online publication of a paper by 16 international experts (Norheim & Peto) proposing as a “feasible goal” the overall reduction of pre-mature deaths by 40% – including, as an important element, a reduction by two-thirds of deaths due to HIV.
The proposals contained in Fast Track are in line with the most radical response scenario set out in pp.291-3 of the UNAIDS GAP report (July 2014), involving reduction of new adult infections to 500,000 by 2020, and 200,000 by 2030. Also reminiscent of the earlier document is the sense of the tide of the epidemic having turned, and of its increasing concentration within the cities of 30 or so nations – and, more specifically, within fairly specific populations of those cities, such as sex workers, intravenous drug-users, etc.. This concentration represents both a challenge and an opportunity (STI/blogs/UNAIDS GAP report). The new element in Fast Track is a three-fold target of 90%: for the proportion of those infected should know their HIV status, the proportion of those knowing their HIV status who receive anti-retroviral therapy, and the proportion of those on therapy who achieve undetectable levels of viral load – all by 2030. A glance back at the GAP report itself reveals what a challenge this is likely to be (e.g. at present, 3 in 5 of HIV infected not receiving ART).
Also timed to coincide with the proposals (25th September) was the announcement of a scheme to expand access to viral load testing through an agreement affecting the pharmaceutical Roche’s COBAS® AmpliPrep/COBAS TaqMan HIV-1 Test version 2.0 (see STI/Hatzakis & Kantzanou). Access to viral load testing is essential to monitoring of HIV-infected people (STI/Hill & Minton), and its high cost has been an obstacle to progress in low and middle income companies up until now. The new agreement may smooth the way to the achievement of the ambitious targets set out in Fast Track.