Prevailing Against Pandemics; Putting People at the Centre — World AIDS Day Report 2020

Five years after a global commitment to Fast-Track the HIV response and end AIDS by 2030, the world is off track. A promise to build on the momentum created in the first decade of the twenty-first century by front-loading investment and accelerating HIV service provision has been fulfilled by too few countries. Important gains in the most affected regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean have been counterbalanced by rising epidemics in Latin America, eastern Europe and central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa. Combined, these successes and failures result in global progress that is far too slow. Agreed milestones for 2020 have been missed. Nearly 700 000 deaths from AIDS-related causes and an 1.7 million new HIV infections in 2019 are unacceptable when effective therapeutics and prevention options are affordable and readily available.

Insufficient investment and action on HIV and other long-running pandemics have also left the world exposed to a new global health threat: COVID-19. Had health systems and social safety nets been even stronger, the world would have been better positioned to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and withstand its impact.

In this report, UNAIDS is calling on countries to make far greater investments in global pandemic responses and adopt a new set of bold, ambitious but achievable HIV targets. If those targets are met, the world will be back on track to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.