Post-2015 Consensus: Health Viewpoint, UNAIDS

Viewpoint Paper

Ghys and Izazola argue that rapidly scaling up available prevention and treatment tools could effectively end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 and that this is something the world cannot afford to ignore. The effectiveness of the interventions depends on targeting specific populations and places where the epidemic is highest, to provide services of proven effectiveness addressing the most vulnerable and affected populations. More funding would be needed, but raising these amounts is considered difficult but feasible.

Reducing new infections and AIDS-related deaths by 2030 would require total resources costing US$35.6 billion by 2020 (48% of these in upper middle income countries) and modestly declining through 2030. Focusing on the top 30 countries with the highest number of new infections would help to reach global targets more efficiently. HIV treatment alone would not be sufficient, and so rapid scale-up of HIV prevention efforts would be needed.

Achieving ambitious new targets would result in approximately 200,000 new HIV infections and 300,000 AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa in 2030, while with continuation of current coverage 1.9 million people would be newly infected and 1.7 million people living with HIV would die that year. Outside the region, new infections could be reduced from 600,000 to 100,000 and deaths from 400,000 to 100,000. When combining elements of full income, productivity growth and savings on medical care spending, total benefits have been preliminary estimated as fifteen times larger than the investments required to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.