New HIV/AIDS political declaration seeks to end inequalities and get on track to end AIDS by 2030

Member States at the High-Level Meeting on HIV and AIDS adopted a Political Declaration in order to get the world on track to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Re-committing to urgent action over the next five years, Member States agreed to:

  • reduce annual new HIV infections to under 370 000 and annual AIDS-related deaths to under 250 000 by 2025, ending pediatric AIDS and eliminating all forms of HIV-related stigma and discrimination.
  • achieve the 95–95–95 testing, treatment and viral suppression targets within all demographics and groups and geographic settings, including children and adolescents living with HIV, ensuring that by 2025, at least 34 million people living with HIV access to medicines, treatment and diagnostics.
  • ensure that 95% of people at risk of HIV infection, are protected against pandemics, including COVID-19 and have access to HIV prevention options by 2025.
  • eliminate all forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, by adopting and enforcing laws that address multiple forms of discrimination and violence faced by women living with, at risk of and affected by HIV.
  • ensure that 90% of people living with HIV receive preventive treatment for TB and reduce AIDS-related TB deaths by 80% by 2025.
  • commend the progress achieved in several regions of the world as a result of implementing research which has led to massive and rapid scaling-up of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and the use of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), in conjunction with treatment as prevention (TasP), resulting in the rapid reductions in the number of new HIV infections.

“With 1.5 million new infections in 2020, a clear focus on the communities and settings with the highest rates of transmission is urgently needed. WHO welcomes the new Political Declaration and looks forward to working with partners on a coordinated response based on global solidarity and shared responsibility, said Dr Meg Doherty, Director of WHO’s Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis and STIs Programmes.

The 2021 UNGA High-Level Meeting on AIDS took place in New York from 8 -10 June 2021, at a historic moment for the AIDS response, 40 years after the emergence of the first cases of HIV. WHO has organized and supported different official side-events at the High-Level meeting to address important aspects of the response to HIV/AIDS, through diverse lines of action, such us: science as the basis for the HIV/AIDS and other pandemic responses, accelerating progress and addressing inequalities through primary health care and how the step up the momentum to end TB deaths among people with HIV.

Video messages to UN General Assembly High-level Meeting on AIDS

Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Deputy Director-General

Henrietta Fore, Executive Director, UNICEF

Dr Faisal Sultan, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health in Pakistan

Dr Mikhail Murashko, Minister of Health of the Russian Federation

Public Release. More on this here.