GLASGOW, United Kingdom – Although several countries are close to meeting the UNAIDS HIV targets for 2020, global progress is just past the halfway point, according to Julio Montaner, MD, director of the BC Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
“This is really very problematic; 2020 is around the corner, and I’m afraid that if we don’t step up the pace, we’re not going to get there,” he said here at HIV Drug Therapy 2016.
The 90-90-90 plan states that by 2020, 90% of those infected with HIV should know their status, 90% of those (81% of the total) should be receiving antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of those (73% of the total) should be virally suppressed. If these targets are achieved, AIDS could be eliminated as a public health threat by 2030, according to UNAIDS.
Although there are pockets of success, the current totals are not 90%, 81%, and 73%, they are 57%, 46%, and 38%, Dr Montaner reported.
In British Columbia, Dr Montaner’s home base, there was political support for the treatment for all people infected with HIV well before guidelines recommended it, he explained. As a result, the incidence of HIV, which had been rising rapidly before 1996, declined significantly.