New results from the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) announced on World AIDS Day 2017 show strong advances in scaling up HIV prevention and treatment.
UNAIDS recently reported that nearly 21 million people living with HIV are accessing antiretroviral therapy—more than half of the 36.7 million people living with HIV are now on life-saving treatment. PEPFAR’s latest data show that PEPFAR supported more than 13.3 million of those men, women and children.
PEPFAR’s new data also indicate that there have been significant declines in new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women. In the 63 districts of 10 African countries implementing PEPFAR’s pioneering DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored and Safe) public–private partnership, the majority (65%) of the highest HIV burden communities or districts achieved a greater than 25% decline in new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women. Importantly, new HIV infections declined in nearly all DREAMS programme districts.
By the end of September 2017, PEPFAR had provided voluntary medical male circumcision to more than 15.2 million men and boys. This result was reached through the largest single-year increase (3.4 million) in new voluntary medical male circumcisions since the beginning of PEPFAR.
PEPFAR has supported more than 6.4 million orphans and other vulnerable children and their caregivers affected by HIV and has prevented HIV infection among 2.2 million babies born to women living with HIV.
The new data add to PEPFAR’s impact results released in the past year, which show that five African countries are approaching control of their HIV epidemics. They also highlight critical advances being made under the PEPFAR Strategy for Accelerating HIV/AIDS Epidemic Control (2017–2020), which was launched by United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the 2017 United Nations General Assembly.
