‘Let’s end the HIV epidemic’

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres’ World Aids Day message:

ENDING Aids as a public health threat by 2030 is achievable.

But reaching this goal requires breaking down the barriers keeping people from vital services.

Every 25 seconds, someone in the world is infected with HIV.

One-quarter of people living with HIV – more than nine million people – lack access to lifesaving treatment.

Discriminatory laws, policies and practices punish and stigmatise vulnerable people – especially women, girls and minorities – preventing their access to proven preventions, testing, treatment and care.

This year’s World Aids Day reminds us the fight against Aids can be won if leaders take a rights-based approach to ensure that everyone – especially the most vulnerable – can get the services they need without fear.

The inspirational advances made in the global HIV response have been powered by global solidarity and human rights.

We will overcome Aids if the rights of everyone, everywhere, are protected.

I call on all leaders to heed this year’s theme and take the “rights” path.

UN Women’s

World Aids Day statement:

HIV continues to take a heavy toll on women and girls. Every week, 4,000 young women and girls around the world are newly infected with HIV – 3,100 of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Violence against women and girls, which increases the risk of HIV for women by 50 per cent, remains pervasive, with no country within reach of eradicating it. Restrictions on young women’s bodily and economic autonomy further exacerbates their risk of infection.

The solutions are clear. To end the HIV epidemic, we must prioritise the rights, health and agency of women and girls in all their diversity.

Women and girls need access to HIV prevention methods that they can afford and control. The new twice-yearly injection with 100 per cent efficacy holds transformative potential. But prevention must be paired with accessible care, psychosocial support, and laws rooted in gender equality and human rights.

To enable this, we must ensure that women’s organisations, particularly those of women living with HIV, are adequately funded, so that they can continue to be key players in the HIV response. We must invest in strengthening women’s leadership. We must build on community-led responses that are key to removing structural barriers for women and girls.

We know that this, especially for young women, along with providing mentorship, helps them to become powerful change-makers in the HIV response. And we must transform unequal gender norms that put women and girls at risk of HIV and that create barriers to health services.

In 1995, world leaders united to adopt the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. One of the commitments in this visionary agenda for women’s rights was ending HIV and AIDS for women and girls.

On World Aids Day, and every day, let us recommit to these promises by ensuring women’s rights and gender equality are central to the HIV response. Women and girls deserve no less.