Francophone mayors gathered in Côte d’Ivoire’s capital, Abidjan, on 23 and 24 March to discuss the HIV responses in their cities. Abidjan’s Governor, Robert Beugré Mambe, and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, convened, with the help of UNAIDS, the two-day meeting with 20 mayors, mostly from western and central Africa.

The meeting comes more than two years after mayors from around the world signed the Paris Declaration to end the AIDS epidemic in their cities.

The mayors who signed the Paris Declaration committed to putting cities on the Fast-Track to ending the AIDS epidemic through a set of commitments. Those commitments include achieving the 90–90–90 targets, which will result in 90% of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status, 90% of people who know their HIV-positive status on treatment and 90% of people on treatment with suppressed viral loads. Several cities, including Paris, are already close to reaching 90–90–90.

Niamey (Niger), Nouakchott (Mauritania), Tunis (Tunisia), Antananarivo (Madagascar) and L’Acul (Haiti) signed the Paris Declaration in Abidjan, bringing the total number of signatory cities worldwide to 215.

During the opening ceremony, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé congratulated Côte d’Ivoire for being one of the countries with the most cities to have signed the Paris Declaration.

In western and central Africa, three out of four people living with HIV do not have access to treatment. This is a sharp contrast with eastern and southern Africa, where average treatment coverage in 2015 was 54%. UNAIDS and partners have therefore launched a catch-up plan to ensure that 1.8 million people in eight western and central African countries access treatment. The plan, Mr Sidibé said, can only succeed with cities and mayors as focal points throughout the region.