InFocus: The Future of HIV

2024

Tremendous scientific and social progress has transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence to a manageable chronic condition for many. However, the disease still kills 650,000 people every year with formidable societal, legal, and economic obstacles remaining to realising the ultimate quest of complete eradication.

This dedicated InFocus, bringing together key stakeholders in the global HIV community – including leading physicians, researchers, activists, and pharmaceutical industry sponsors – strives to understand the achievements, shortfalls, and contradictions in the war against AIDS.

From the transformed treatment paradigm to upcoming scientific breakthroughs, public policy progress, and revolutionised market access, this report sheds light on the immense progress that has been made over the past 40 years; some of the most pressing current challenges facing people living with HIV; and the causes for optimism – as well as concern – for their future.

Articles

HIV: Revolutionised Market Access

In 2024, people living with HIV have more, and more varied, access to HIV prevention and treatment options than ever before. Thanks to global activism efforts forcing pharma to step up, and the establishment of some vital institutional structures in the first decade of the millennium, access is up, while incidence and deaths are down.…

HIV: Shifting the Treatment Paradigm

Several major scientific breakthroughs in HIV prevention and treatment in the past 40 years have successfully transformed HIV from a near-certain ‘death sentence’ to a manageable chronic disease where many patients can still enjoy long and largely healthy lives. This, however, is contingent on them having access to the full range of the options available.…

HIV: Public Policy Progress

The timely and equitable provision of treatment and prevention tools is just one part of the ongoing fight against HIV. Local, national, regional, and international authorities – many of which still labour under misguided preconceptions about people living with HIV – need to come together to effectively buttress the provision of next generation therapies with…

Inside the 35-Year Quest for an HIV Vaccine

35 years after the specific mechanisms and structure of the human immunodeficiency virus were first identified, the world is still waiting for a vaccine against HIV. Several late-stage candidates have failed in this time, leading to most of the major pharma companies exiting HIV vaccine research. Some new early-stage approaches hold major promise, but –…

A Lifeline in Limbo: Politicisation Threatens PEPFAR’s Leading Global Role in HIV/AIDS Relief

A public health initiative said to have saved over 25 million lives, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has had an enormous impact on the fight against HIV/AIDS through providing HIV treatment, prevention, and education. Since its inception in 2003 PEPFAR has largely enjoyed bipartisan support within Congress, although increasing polarisation of…

After Four Decades of Battling to Save Lives from HIV/AIDS, Where Are We? (Part Three)

The third and final piece in Lenias Hwenda of Medicines for Africa’s series looking back at the challenges and successes of HIV/AIDS treatments over the past 40 years and potential medical breakthroughs to come (read part one here and part two here). Here, Hwenda examines the persistent challenge of HIV/AIDS survivors losing their lives to…