Recognizing the Progress Made on World AIDS Day
On December 1, the world acknowledged World AIDS Day, which was first held in 1988 and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, support people living with HIV, and commemorate those who have died.
A lot has changed since the first cases of what would become known as AIDS were reported in 1981. Today, there are treatments available that work as both treatment and prevention, and being diagnosed with the disease.
But there is still a long way to go to completely eradicate the disease in the US. There are 50,000 individuals newly infected with HIV each year in the US, and approximately 1 in 8 of the 1.2 million currently infected do not know their status, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
However, ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic is possible through the use of antiretroviral therapy (ART), an array of prevention tools including pre-exposure prophylaxis, and the elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission.
“On this World AIDS Day, there is considerable optimism that an end to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is achievable,” Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Carl Dieffenbach, PhD, director of the Division of AIDS at NIAID; and Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, released in a statement. “However, to do this, we must have the will to apply established scientific findings and continue to follow the science. We must build on the promising achievements made through the dedication of researchers, health care professionals and clinical trial participants, and continue to work together to fill the gaps that remain.”
Dr Fauci and Hilary D. Marston, MD, MPH, policy advisor for global health at NIAID, recently co-wrote an article in New England Journal of Medicine and made the case for using ART not just in the treatment of AIDS, but also in prevention. The results from 3 key trials from 2006 to 2015 found that using ART as a prevention “could dramatically reduce the incidence of HIV infection.”