CGD Policy Blogs

This is a joint post with Mead Over and Denizhan Duran.

In mid-2011, one of the biggest developments in HIV/AIDS research took place. The HPTN 052 study found that early antiretroviral therapy treatment could reduce HIV transmission by 96% in couples where one partner is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative. The study was heralded as the breakthrough of 2011 by Science, and was hailed as a game changer by many others, including UNAIDS, The Economist and The Lancet. The World Health Organization wrote a comprehensive guideline for TasP, or treatment as prevention, in June 2012, asserting that “TasP needs to be considered as a key element of combination HIV prevention and as a major part of the solution to ending the HIV epidemic.”

It’s that magical time of the year when we bring you the top 10 most read entries on the CGD Global Health Policy Blog.  Together, these top posts had a total almost 20,000 unique page views. This year the blog asked for your feedback on evaluating the quality of health aid, addressed the debate over entities like the GHI and AMFm, and discussed everything from cash transfers to priority-setting.

Around this time last year, world leaders called for “the beginning of the end of AIDS” and an “AIDS-free generation”, and committed to reaching the ambitious disease-specific targets for HIV/AIDS: the virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission; 15 million people on treatment and a reduction in new adult and adolescent HIV infections — all by a rapidly approaching 2015. And this year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recommitted to these ambitious goals in the release of the PEPFAR Blueprint, saying “An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach”. While the overarching World AIDS Day message remains clear – we have made tremendous progress thus far, and there is still a long way to go in the fight against AIDS – one question remains: is this really the beginning of the end of AIDS?

Although President Obama will be plenty busy during the remainder of his first term working with Congress to avoid the fiscal cliff, he need not wait until the start of his second term to further his vision for making US policy more supportive of global poverty reduction.