World AIDS Day — let's work with urgency to battle this disease

By Bill Frist and Michel Sidibe

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is one of the most successful humanitarian relief efforts ever undertaken, and it is directed at one of the world's most daunting public health problems. AIDS strikes people in the prime of their lives, shatters families and communities, orphans children, and threatens the ability of nations to develop. Bipartisan, U.S.-led efforts to address the epidemic, supported by other donor nations and the affected countries themselves, have brought health, and hope, to tens of millions of men, women and children facing AIDS. Millions are alive today who would have certainly succumbed to the disease; AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 48% since the peak in 2005. American leadership, generosity and the expertise of many on the ground in countries impacted by AIDS have achieved what few even imagined was possible when PEPFAR was created.

As of this World AIDS Day, December 1, nearly 21 million people living with HIV are accessing antiretroviral therapy—this is more than half of the 36.7 million people living with HIV. Of those on lifesaving treatment, 13.3 million. are supported by PEPFAR. The program has prevented more than two million babies from being born with HIV. It has supported more than six million AIDS orphans and provided voluntary medical male circumcision to 15.2 million men and boys.

In six countries where PEPFAR has made significant investments—Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe—new studies show that the rate of viral load suppression among people living with HIV—a key marker for treatment success and necessary for stopping HIV transmission—was more than 60%. (By comparison, the global average for viral suppression is 44%.)

But there is a downside to such success. Remarkable progress globally, paired with advances in antiretroviral therapy, has created a dangerous misperception that the threat of HIV/AIDS is over. It is not over—yet. Unless we maintain and step up our response, millions of men, women, and children who can otherwise stay healthy will suffer and die.

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PEPFAR was created in a moment when little was known about how to stop the AIDS epidemic. Today, we know what to do, how to do it, and where it needs to be done. We have the medicine, the prevention tools and the international cooperation required to tackle this global health challenge. All that stands now between the possibility and the reality of ending AIDS is the determination of today’s leaders.

Read the full piece published in The Hill on Dec. 1, 2017.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D. is a cardiothoracic surgeon and founder of Hope Through Healing Hands.

Michel Sidibe is the Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations.