The following is an opinion-piece written for the Huffington Post by Chris Collins, Vice President and Director of Public Policy, amfAR: The Foundation for AIDS Research.
The Blueprint for an AIDS-Free Generation released by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in November 2012 makes a bold declaration: We are at a tipping point in this most devastating pandemic of our time. By scaling up core, effective interventions, HIV infection and death rates can be brought down steadily in the coming years, and in relatively short order the costs will begin to recede as well.
There are many reports on the topic of global health. This one deserves to be read and acted on — and funded. If you don’t read the whole report, look at the pictures. Four graphs in the Blueprint are based on mathematical modeling of the distinctly different epidemics in Cambodia, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. In each case, as AIDS treatment reaches people earlier in the course of disease, and as part of a combination of proven interventions, HIV incidence falls more rapidly. A separate graph, for Uganda, shows the dynamic effect of scaled-up services leading to reduced resource needs within just a few years. The same progress is possible in the U.S. epidemic, where some jurisdictions that have expanded coverage of AIDS-related services have seen declining HIV infection rates.