Health department representatives from Amsterdam, Nairobi, Paris, San Francisco and São Paulo gathered during a Fast-Track Cities Symposium at the 2017 International AIDS Conference on HIV Science in Paris. They shared their lessons learned and challenges in preventing new HIV infections and addressing barriers to health.

Amsterdam is among the first cities to have reached the 90-90-90 targets whereby 90% of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% of people diagnosed are on treatment, and 90% of people on treatment are virally suppressed.

Many other cities like Paris are on the right track and have mobilized political commitment for the Fast-Track Cities agenda.  With support from the core partners of the Fast-Track Cities network, including UNAIDS, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, the City of Paris and UN Habitat, cities are adopting innovative approaches to reach affected populations, to optimize linkages to HIV treatment and care, and to address different gaps according to the cities.

Early HIV diagnosis has boosted early treatment uptake as has using strategic data to improve various HIV programmes.  The cities of Bangkok, Nairobi and New Orleans launched city dashboards at the conference, illustrating significant progress.  Baseline 90-90-90 data published include 79-57-79 for Bangkok, 77-96-86 for Nairobi, and 87-69-91 for New Orleans.  Additional data presented at the afternoon session showed 87-65-91 for São Paulo, 93-79-91 for San Francisco and 94-90-94 for Amsterdam.

Since the 2014 launch of the Paris Declaration—Fast-Track Cities: Ending the AIDS Epidemic—more than 200 cities and municipalities around the world have committed to the achieving the 90-90-90 targets by 2020. Almaty in Kazakhstan was the latest city to sign the declaration on 20 July 2017.