Leveraging HIV Treatment to End AIDS, Stop New HIV Infections, and Avoid the Cost of Inaction

Abstract

We have the tools at our disposal to significantly bend AIDS-related morbidity and mortality curves and reduce human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) incidence. It is thus essential to redouble our efforts to reach the goal of placing 15 million people on life-saving and -enhancing antiretroviral therapy (ART) by 2015. In reaching this milestone, we can write a new chapter in the history of global health, demonstrating that a robust, multidimensional response can succeed against a complex pandemic that presents as many social and political challenges as it does medical ones. This milestone is also critical to advance our ultimate goal of ending AIDS by maximizing the therapeutic and preventive effects of ART, which translates into a world in which AIDS-related deaths and new HIV infections are exceedingly rare.