Calling for community-led HIV responses – #LetCommunitiesLead

In 2022, despite progress, AIDS claimed a life every minute, totalling 630,000 deaths from AIDS-related causes. Out of 39 million people living with HIV globally, 29.8 million receive life-saving treatment. Concerningly, 9.2 million are not receiving treatment, and 2.1 million are not virally suppressed. Unacceptably, treatment coverage for children and adolescents is low, with 660,000 children (43% of the 1.5 million) living with HIV not receiving treatment. In 2022, 23% of new infections occurred in the Asia-Pacific region, where HIV numbers are rising significantly in some countries.

With only seven years left to achieve the 2030 goal of eradicating AIDS as an epidemic, we remind the world that we cannot truly reach this goal without communities leading and paving the way. We are off the path to 2030 targets and need to take extraordinary steps to reach them. The 2023 World AIDS Day theme is “Let Communities Lead” while the theme for International AIDS conference 2024 is “Put People First” – both emphasise the need for a people-centred and community-led approach to end AIDS as an epidemic by 2030.

Read the full statement below.

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