Biden administration pledges to eradicate AIDS by 2030: US will spend extra $7.4bn a year
>
The Biden administration has pledged to eradicate HIV/AIDS by 2030 in the US and around the world.
Medical advances mean rich countries have now suppressed the virus and most patients with the disease can lead normal lives. But in the poorest countries, the disease remains deadly and is among the top five causes of death in Africa each year.
In the US, about 30,000 people contract HIV each year, while 1.5 million infections a year occur worldwide, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Bolstering efforts to eradicate the virus, the US government has announced a new five-year plan to boost the distribution of HIV-fighting drugs on the continent.
It comes after the FDA’s plans to overturn a decades-long ban on gay or bisexual men donating blood, put in place during the HIV epidemic in the 1980s, were revealed.
The chart above shows the number of new HIV infections diagnosed in the United States each year through 2020. More than half were in the South.
The above shows the number of new HIV infections reported by country in 2020. Southern Africa recorded the highest number of new infections. Gray countries have yet to report data
In the US, the Biden administration has already drawn up plans to invest $10 billion in providing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to underinsured and uninsured Americans.
The drug reduces someone’s risk of contracting the virus by 99 percent and works by stopping it from replicating. But it is not prescribed for people who already have HIV.
There are also plans for $850 million in funding for HIV prevention and care programs.
The proposals were included in the 2023 federal budget, which has yet to be approved by Congress.
The Biden administration has pledged to eradicate HIV in the US by 2019.
He defined this as reducing new HIV infections nationwide by more than 90 percent, or below 3,000 per year.
The White House unveiled the new five-year strategy on World AIDS Awareness Day Thursday.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkinken said: ‘Our work is not done. HIV remains a serious threat to global health security and economic development.
‘Our progress can easily be derailed if we lose our focus or conviction, or if we fail to address the inequities, many fueled by stigma and discrimination and punitive laws, that stand in our way.’
The plan focuses on five pillars to combat HIV infections worldwide.
They included investments to expand HIV testing in Africa and to set up more factories to make medicines for HIV patients on the continent.
Officials also plan to set clear goals with regional and local leaders to reduce HIV transmission.
Some $7.4 billion was requested for these efforts in the 2023 budget alone, and last year they cost $7 billion.
HIV emerged in the 1970s and 1980s primarily among gay or bisexual men as an epidemic in the community.
The disease attacks the immune system, eventually causing the body to become overwhelmed by conditions that are normally kept under control, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
This shows where in the US new HIV cases were diagnosed, with more than half in the South.
In the US, the AIDS virus was first identified in June 1981, after sparking an epidemic that killed more than 100,000 people, mostly gay men.
Since then, billions in funding have been poured into researching treatments and cures for the disease.
This has led to the development of PrEP, which protects people from infection, and antiretrovirals that work to suppress the virus in patients.
Trials of an HIV vaccine, which uses the same mRNA technology as Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid vaccines, began in February of this year.
The new plan was unveiled for the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which leads the United States’ efforts to end the HIV epidemic through world level.
The agency works in 50 countries in Africa and the Americas, including Nigeria, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti.
In a statement, the agency said it would boost its “collaboration and partnerships” with other global and local organizations working toward the same goal.
It plans to strengthen ties with the Africa CDC, WHO AFRO and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), among others.
PEPFAR also said in the statement that it had supported antiretroviral treatment for 10 times as many people this year compared to 2021.
Some 20 million people worldwide received the treatment as of September, he said, compared with fewer than 2 million in 2020.
The program also supported HIV testing for 64.7 million people and helped prevent 5.5 million babies from being born with HIV.
The efforts were estimated to have saved 25 million lives.
For the US, the most recent data shows that there were 30,000 new HIV diagnoses in 2020, which is a 12% decrease from the previous year and the lowest annual number since 2015.
Covid lockdowns, restrictions and stay-at-home orders likely contributed to this drop in transmission.
Data for 2021 has not yet been released, but transmission of other STIs, such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, have increased this year.
More than seven in 10 new cases were among gay or bisexual men in 2019, and last year half of all cases were detected in the southern US.
The Administration aims to reduce new infections to 9,588 by 2025, 70 percent fewer, and to 3,000 by 2030, 90 percent fewer.
About 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV, while globally there are 38.4 million living with the disease.
Nearly 13,000 people die of AIDS in the US each year, while there are about 650,000 deaths each year worldwide.