90-90-90 HIV Goals Top-of-Mind at Geneva Summit

published on October 11, 2016 by Ingrid Hein, in Medscape

The 90-90-90 targets for HIV will dominate discussion at the upcoming Controlling the HIV Epidemic with Antiretrovirals Summit 2016 in Geneva.

"When we launched this series of summits several years ago, we did not have consensus on the importance of scaling up treatment as prevention and pre-exposure prophylaxis," said José Zuniga, PhD, president of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care.

"We spent a lot of time building that consensus and moving stakeholders to support this intervention, which ultimately is the foundation for obtaining the 90-90-90 targets," he told Medscape Medical News.

The targets set by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly are designed to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. The initiative sets out three targets; by 2020, 90% of people with HIV infection will be diagnosed, 90% of people diagnosed will be on antiretroviral therapy, and the virus will be suppressed in 90% of people receiving antiretroviral therapy.

In his keynote address, Michel Sidibé, executive director of UN AIDS, will discuss the strategies, emerging opportunities, and political processes involved in meeting the 90-90-90 targets. Antiretroviral suppression and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) will play a major role in the achievement of these goals.

"One of the big topics we are going to address is where we stand with PrEP," said Dr Zuniga. "PrEP used to prevent the transmission of HIV, often taken by partners of people living with HIV, hasn't been approved in many countries, and uptake is slow in countries where it has been approved, including the United States."

However, in the United Kingdom, the National Health Services has gone to court to try to force the government to pay for PrEP, he reported.

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