Science and research

The Desert AIDS Project has awarded its prestigious Science and Medicine Award to UNAIDS. The award was presented to the Deputy Executive Director, Management and Governance, of UNAIDS, Gunilla Carlsson, at the 25th Annual Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards in Palm Springs, United States of America, on 9 February.

“UNAIDS is deeply humbled to receive the Science and Medicine Award from an organization like Desert AIDS Project, which has made, and continues to make, such an incredible contribution to the AIDS response. We accept this award on behalf of all people working to ensure that no one is left behind or excluded from life-saving HIV services,” said Ms Carlsson.

Ms Carlsson was joined on stage by Musah Lumumba El-nasoor, the Team Leader of the East and Southern Africa Youth Alliance on Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV.

“UNAIDS is mobilizing political support, setting the pace and the global agenda, to ensure that science is matched with the necessary resources and tools to deliver results for all people, including those at the margins of society,” Mr El-nasoor said.

Named after one of the Desert AIDS Project’s earliest financial supporters, the designer Steve Chase, the Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards ceremony is the biggest fundraising event of the year for the Desert AIDS Project and an important event on the Palm Springs social calendar.

Steve Chase died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 52 and left an incredible mark on the Desert AIDS Project through his philanthropic work and his ability to bring people together. The first Steve Chase Awards ceremony was held in his honour in 1995.

The Desert AIDS Project provides HIV prevention, treatment and care services to people living with and affected by HIV across the Palm Springs area. Established by a group of volunteers in 1984, the project is today raising funds to expand its Palm Springs campus. With the support of volunteers and donors, it is hoped that the newly raised funds will help meet the health-care needs of 10 000 people, many who are living with HIV.

The event was attended by around 2000 people and made more than US$ 1 million, which will be put towards the US$ 20 million needed for the Desert AIDS Project’s expansion plans. To date, the Desert AIDS Project has raised US$ 13 million towards its goal.

“With leadership provided by the United Nations, and specifically UNAIDS, all of us, including the Desert AIDS Project, working together will achieve what was previously thought of as impossible: the end of AIDS,” said David Brinkman, the Chief Executive Officer of the Desert AIDS Project.

Past award winners of the Science and Medicine Award include Michael Gottlieb, Desmond Tutu and Anthony Fauci. 

The possibilities for new and improved HIV prevention options were showcased at the recent HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P) conference, although the participants heard that many new tools are still several years from being ready for implementation.

The importance of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), including PrEP delivered by a vaginal ring and long-acting PrEP, including injectable PrEP, was featured in many presentations. Vaginal ring PrEP offers better female-controlled prevention options that can protect women without their partner’s knowledge, while injectable PrEP would mean that daily pill-taking and the risk of forgetting to take the pill would be history. Both vaginal ring PrEP and long-acting PrEP are still some way from being available, however, with the vaginal ring currently being reviewed for regulatory approval by the European Medicines Agency and trials for long-acting PrEP not due to deliver results until 2021 or later.

If antibodies and engineered molecules that mimic them can be shown to prevent HIV infection, the way to six-monthly injections for either prevention or treatment could be opened up, along with the possibility of a vaccine that made people develop their own similar antibodies. The participants heard that much progress had been made in discovering and developing such antibodies. The first proof of principle trials showing their effectiveness will report their results in 2020.

“Science has delivered us extraordinary advances in technologies for the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of HIV infection. There is now real excitement that over the next years it will also lead to effective affordable prevention tools,” said Peter Godfrey-Faussett, Science Adviser, UNAIDS.

The participants heard that there are high levels of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among the populations at higher risk of HIV and that, as we have known for decades, STIs lead to increased HIV acquisition. The rates of the major treatable bacterial STIs have been rising steadily and are at alarming levels among gay men and other men who have sex with men and young people in eastern and southern Africa, in part due to declining condom usage. The high rates of the major treatable STIs have become particularly evident with the advent of increased screening accompanying the roll-out of PrEP.

Many STIs have no symptoms and can only be diagnosed with modern diagnostic tests—these are simple, but still far too expensive for the countries that need them the most. Along with geography and age group, STIs are among the strongest indicator of risk of HIV. An integrated STI and HIV prevention approach could offer PrEP to people who are HIV-negative but have an STI and live in an area where HIV is prevalent.

New prevention technologies are likely to be relatively expensive and hence will need to be focused on populations at higher risk in order to be affordable and cost-effective. Mathematical modelling shows that these new HIV prevention technologies may have only a limited impact on new HIV infections in eastern and southern Africa. For example, modelling of the impact of the dapivirine ring—a vaginal ring with a slow release of an antiretroviral medicine that protects against HIV infection—shows that only 1.5–2.5% of HIV infections would be averted over the next 18 years in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa. With the cost of averting one HIV infection through the use of the dapivirine ring varying from US$ 10 000 to US$ 100 000, many of the participants argued for integrating and combining both HIV treatment and prevention, and the responses to HIV and other diseases, for maximum effect.

The biennial HIVR4P conference was held in Madrid, Spain, from 21 to 25 October.

As the world grapples with how to speed up reductions in new HIV infections, great optimism is coming from the world of HIV prevention research with a slate of efficacy trials across the prevention pipeline. Major HIV vaccine and antibody efficacy trials are under way, as is critical follow-on research for proven antiretroviral-based prevention options.

However, a new report by the Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention R&D Working Group shows that rather than bolstering the new research by increasing investments into these exciting new advances, resources for HIV prevention research and development are actually slowing down.

In fact, in 2017, HIV research funding declined for the fifth consecutive year, falling to its lowest level in more than a decade. In 2017, funding for HIV prevention research and development decreased by 3.5% (US$ 40 million) from the previous year, falling to US$ 1.1 billion.

“Make no mistake, we are in a prevention crisis and we cannot afford a further funding crisis,” said Mitchell Warren, AVAC Executive Director. “It is unacceptable that donor funding for HIV prevention research continues to fall year after year even as research is moving new options closer to reality. We need continued and sustained investment to keep HIV prevention research on track to provide the new tools that will move the world closer to ending AIDS as a public health threat.”

The report warns that meeting the UNAIDS HIV prevention Fast-Track target of less than 500 000 new infections by 2020 (new HIV infections were at 1.8 million in 2017) will not only require the expansion of existing options such as voluntary medical male circumcision and pre-exposure prophylaxis, but also the development of innovative new products, including long-acting antiretroviral-based prevention options and a vaccine.

Indeed, sustained funding will be critical to keep the full gamut of HIV prevention research moving forward in a timely manner, as even small declines in funding could delay or sideline promising new HIV prevention options that are needed to end the AIDS epidemic.

“With 5000 people becoming infected with HIV every day, it is critical that we both scale up the effective HIV prevention programmes we currently have and invest in new technologies and solutions so that they can become a reality for the populations most affected by HIV,” said Tim Martineau, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, a.i. “Doing both will avert new infections, save lives and reduce the rising costs of life-long antiretroviral treatment.”

The Government of the United States of America continues to be the major funder of HIV prevention research, contributing almost three quarters of overall funding in 2017. However, this was also a decrease of almost 6%, bringing funding from the United States to a five year low of US$ 830 million. The report highlights that the uncertainty around continued political will to fund the AIDS response is a serious concern. 

This week, researchers, implementers, advocates and funders are gathering at the HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P 2018) conference in Madrid, Spain, to review progress in HIV prevention research. There is much to be optimistic about in HIV science and in the accumulated knowledge of how to end the epidemic; however, the sobering changes in the funding and policy environments are raising some serious concerns about the future of the response to HIV and the world’s ability to respond to the continued challenges that HIV presents.

The report and infographics on prevention research investment are online at www.hivresourcetracking.org and on social media with #HIVPxinvestment.

Since 2000, the Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention R&D Working Group (formerly the HIV Vaccines & Microbicides Resource Tracking Working Group) has employed a comprehensive methodology to track trends in research and development investments and expenditures for biomedical HIV prevention options. AVAC leads the secretariat of the working group, which also includes the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and UNAIDS.

A team of French researchers has succeeded in filming HIV infecting a healthy cell. UNAIDS spoke to Morgane Bomsel, Research Team Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), about the feat.

What motivated you to film HIV transmission?
Morgane Bomsel: HIV transmission has not been studied much and we had no precise idea of the exact sequence of events leading to HIV infection of genital fluids during sexual intercourse. Neither did we know how immune cells are infected and what the consequences are. The vast majority of new HIV infections are acquired via the genital and rectal mucosa; however, the outer layer, the epithelium, of those tissues varies and affects how HIV enters the body.

What were the challenges?

MB: The challenges involved building an experimental model that mimicked genital mucosa infected by genital fluids suitable for live imaging. We reconstructed in vitro human male urethral mucosa based on human cells, the surface of which had been engineered to be red, and an infected white blood cell (a T lymphocyte, the main infectious element in sexual fluids) that was engineered to be fluorescent green and in turn would produce fluorescent green HIV infectious particles.

We had to render the system fluorescent to be able to visualize it and track HIV entry in the mucosa by live fluorescent scanning. Finally, we had to devise a system to allow the microscope lens to visualize the contact between the cells. All of this, of course, was done in an extremely secure setting and all of us were wearing two pairs of gloves and a hat, a coat, glasses and a mask.

When did you know you had a breakthrough?

MB: Our eureka moment was when we captured on film the spillage of a string of viruses, like a gun showering bullets. This lasts for a couple of hours and then, as if the infected cell has lost interest, it detaches itself and moves on.

Please walk us through the video

MB: The HIV-infected cells are labelled in green and produce fluorescent viruses that appear as green dots.

What we see is the HIV-infected cell attaching itself closely to the outer layer, the epithelium, of healthy reconstructed cells of a genital tract mucosal lining.

White blood cells of the immune system, macrophages, that usually engulf foreign substances, debris or cancer cells are seen engulfing the red particles slightly moving next to the blue macrophage nucleus.

The HIV-infected cell approaches the surface of the mucosa and places itself gently on the surface. Owing to, or induced by, contact, the infected cell recruits preformed viruses towards the cell contact (the intense yellow green patches) and then starts to spit those preformed viruses as full infectious viruses that appear as green dots.

These green viruses penetrate the outer layer of the tissue by a process called transcytosis—a type of transcellular transportation. The viruses enter the cell and exit, still infectious, at the other side of the epithelial barrier. As a result, HIV penetrates the types of white blood cells responsible for detecting, engulfing and destroying foreign substances and infects them. Once inside the nucleus, the virus inserts itself in the genetic material, the DNA, and the blood cells that are meant to protect the body start to produce viruses.

Interestingly enough, the video showed that the production of viruses does not last very long. After three weeks, the infected white blood cells become dormant and a reservoir of white blood cells is formed.

What makes HIV particularly tricky to cure?

MB: Attempts to cure HIV have been very difficult because of the dormant infected white blood cells. Those cells are hard for the immune system to find and kill, and for the scientist to study. Antiretroviral medicines prevent the virus from spreading throughout the body and the immune system targets cells that are actively transcribing viral DNA. But because of the reservoir, these cells become a problem if a patient stops taking antiretroviral therapy. They can slowly awaken, allowing the virus to replicate freely.

GENEVA, 17 May 2018—On HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, 18 May, UNAIDS is calling for an increase in research and investment to find an effective vaccine to protect people against HIV and stop new HIV infections. In 2016, around 1.8 million people were newly infected with HIV and although the number of new infections has declined in recent years, the world is still far from achieving the UNAIDS Fast-Track Target of reducing new HIV infections to fewer than 500 000 by 2020.

“New HIV infections are not declining fast enough and stopping infections must become a global priority,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “There are 36.7 million people living with HIV today, all in need of costly treatment for life, which will be difficult to sustain over the long term. To truly end AIDS, it is essential to find an effective HIV vaccine and a cure.” 

In mid-2017, more than half (20.9 million) of the 36.7 million people living with HIV had access to antiretroviral medicines to keep them alive and well. Over the next decade, efforts will be scaled up so that all people living with HIV can access the life-saving treatment. Without a cure or a therapeutic vaccine, millions of people will need to be sustained on lifelong treatment.

Promising steps have been made in recent years, with four large-scale trials currently under way and exciting developments in the pipeline. Innovative approaches to immunization are showing great promise in animal models and an ever-increasing array of highly potent broadly neutralizing antibodies have been discovered and can be engineered to persist in the human body so that we may one day be able to prevent HIV infection with a single injection each year.

Safe and effective vaccines have the potential to change the world. Some infectious diseases that were once commonplace, killing millions and leaving countless people with lifelong disabilities, have become rare. Smallpox has been eradicated, only 17 people developed polio in 2017 and in 2016 the Pan American Health Organization declared that measles had been eliminated from the Americas.

An effective, durable, affordable and safe vaccine for HIV would significantly advance efforts to end AIDS. For the past decade, investments have remained steady, at around US$ 900 million per year, which is less than 5% of the total resources needed for the AIDS response. By scaling up investments in HIV vaccine research, diversifying funding and attracting the best scientists from around the world, a vaccine for HIV could become a reality.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

A record 3000 delegates from more than 60 countries, including representatives of civil society, scientific institutions, the private sector and governments, gathered in Moscow from 18 to 20 April 2018 to participate in the Sixth Eastern Europe and Central Asia Conference on HIV/AIDS. The conference focused on four major tracks: prevention, science and treatment, civil society, and international cooperation.

Eastern Europe and central Asia is the only region where the number of new HIV infections and AIDS-related death are still on the rise. The conference provides a unique opportunity to take stock of progress and discuss the challenges and transformation needed to get the eastern Europe and central Asia region on track to end AIDS.

The keynote speakers at the opening ceremony included Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS Executive Director, Olga Golodets, Vice Prime Minster of the Russian Federation, Anna Popova, Head of Russia’s Federal Service for Consumer Protection and Human Wellbeing, Alexsey Tsoy, Deputy Minister of Health of Kazakhstan, Alexander Pankin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Lyudmila Rastokina, a representative of the Kazakhstan’s Union of People Living with HIV, and representatives of the private sector and others.

Despite the overall increase in HIV-related deaths and infections, in the past two years the eastern Europe and central Asia region has made progress in a few areas. For example, Armenia and Belarus were validated by the World Health Organization as having eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Most countries of the region adopted the test and treat approach and the average cost of first-line antiretroviral treatment has dropped from almost US$ 2000 per person, per year to less than US$ 200 per person, per year.

A number of key challenges were highlighted at the conference, including the fact that only 3% of total HIV expenditures in the region go for programmes focused on key populations, including people who inject drugs, migrants, sex workers, transgender people, prisoners and men who have sex with men. The region also faces the triple epidemics of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C virus which require an integrated approach to prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

The conference was organized by the Russian Federation’s Federal Service for Consumer Protection and Human Wellbeing and UNAIDS.

UNAIDS is saddened by the news of the sudden death of David Cooper on 18 March. He was a pioneering HIV researcher, immunologist and professor at Australia’s University of New South Wales and in 1986 became the first Director of the National Centre of HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, now known as the Kirby Institute. 

Mr Cooper diagnosed the first documented case of HIV in Australia in the mid-1980s, and in 1991 was named Chair of the WHO Global Programme on AIDS’ Committee on Clinical Research and Drug Development.

He was a past President of the International AIDS Society and worked with colleagues to found the HIV Netherlands Australia Thailand Research Collaboration, known as HIV-NAT, in Bangkok, Thailand.

“The world has lost a bold and compassionate leader in the response to HIV,” said Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS Executive Director. “David Cooper firmly believed in health as a fundamental human right. Without the groundbreaking research and advances in treatment that he helped to make a reality, many more lives would have been lost to AIDS. Our thoughts during this difficult time are with his family, colleagues and the many people his life and work touched.”

It has long been recognized that the response to HIV can’t exist in isolation, but must be integrated within a broader health and development agenda. A daylong event set out to understand better how three areas critical to women living with HIV—cervical cancer, hormonal contraception and female genital schistosomiasis (FGS)—intersect.

The importance of taking a holistic approach to girls and women and their sexual and reproductive health and rights was a central theme of the event. Held on the sidelines of the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the event highlighted the possibilities of recent technological and medical advances to improve women’s health.

Setting the scene, Ebony Johnson, from the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, said, “Too often women are unheard, forgotten, underserved, improperly researched—I invite and implore you to go in a new direction so that change truly comes.”

Women living with HIV are more likely to have the human papillomavirus (HPV) and are five times more likely to develop cervical cancer, which kills approximately 250 000 women each year. To emphasize the scale of the problem, Vikrant Sahasrabuddhe, of the National Cancer Institute, United States National Institutes of Health, noted that, “In the past 20 minutes of the presentation, 20 women were newly diagnosed with cervical cancer and 10 women died from cervical cancer.”

A disease that mostly affects low- and middle-income countries, where 90% of all new diagnoses and deaths occur, cervical cancer is, however, preventable through the HPV vaccine and treatable if diagnosed early.

New technology has been developed to screen women for HPV DNA or tell-tale proteins that are the signs of cervical cancer. And new tools are allowing early treatment even in clinics with limited resources. The event heard how global partnerships, including the United Nations Joint Global Programme on Cervical Cancer Prevention and Control, which UNAIDS is a part of, are committed to reducing the burden of disease, and how national HIV programmes are at the forefront of efforts to roll-out these new services to women living with HIV in order to lessen the toll that cervical cancer continues to take worldwide.

While giving women the opportunity to control how many children they have, and when, concern has been raised about long-lasting injections of a progestogen, specifically depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA). Studies have suggested that DMPA may be associated with an increased risk of HIV acquisition. Currently, more than 150 million women worldwide use hormonal contraception and there is a high proportion of women using injectable hormonal contraception in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is also high HIV incidence.

A large-scale trial—the Evidence for Contraceptive Options and HIV Outcomes (ECHO) study—which is hoped to settle the uncertainty of DMPA use and HIV risk association, is ongoing. The difficult decisions that will need to be made should the study confirm the elevated risk for HIV from the use of DMPA were discussed by the participants —the decisions will clearly have to be balanced against the known benefits of a highly effective contraceptive and will affect millions of users.

“Both HIV and unintended pregnancy remain global health priorities. As we discover the potential risk of hormonal injectable contraceptives for HIV acquisition, women need accurate information to be able to exercise informed contraceptive choices,” said Nelly Rwamba Mugo, from the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

FGS, also known as bilharzia, is a disease that is often neglected, but affects some 55 million girls and women. With FGS, bleeding during sex results from lesions in the vaginal walls and ulcers in the cervix. These lesions put women who live with FGS at a higher risk of contracting HIV. However, cheap and effective treatment in childhood of girls who are infected with the parasite that causes FGS can stop its development later in life.

“Genital inflammation increases the risk of HIV acquisition. We need more research on coinfections, treatment of schistosomiasis and related HIV prevention strategies to help form policies that protect women’s health,” said Pragna Patel, from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How to scale up treatment and prevention options, and how to ensure synergy between HIV programmes and schistosomiasis control programmes in a country, were key areas of focus during the day’s discussions.

Throughout the day, how to integrate rights, services and HIV was a recurrent theme. Speakers from UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, research centres and hospitals stressed the need to seek out synergies and collaborate in order to build a cross-cutting AIDS response.

“The symposium provided a great opportunity for a wide range of people, from community activists to laboratory scientists and from young students to scientists and experienced policy-makers, to share and discuss their breadth of perspectives,” said Peter Godfrey-Faussett, Senior Adviser, Science, at UNAIDS.

The event, Improving Women’s Health: HIV, Contraception, Cervical Cancer and Schistosomiasis, was held on 15 March at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York, United States of America.

GENEVA, 7 March 2018—UNAIDS welcomes mid-way results from two studies that show that a vaginal ring releasing long-acting antiretroviral medicine to prevent HIV is up to 54% effective in preventing HIV infections among women. The ring, which is replaced monthly, slowly releases the antiretroviral medicine dapivirine and could give women an additional HIV prevention option that is discreet and that they can control.

“These results are significant,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “Structural, behavioural and biological factors make women more vulnerable to HIV infection, so it is extremely important that they have the opportunity to protect themselves from HIV, on their own terms.”

The interim results are from two large open-label studies—studies in which the participants know which medicine is being used; that is, no placebo is used—conducted in South Africa and Uganda. The trails enrolled women between the ages of 20 and 50 years.

The HOPE trial, which began in August 2016 and enrolled more than 1400 women by October 2017—the time of the interim review—found a 54% reduction in HIV risk. This means that the rate of new HIV infections was 1.9 women newly infected for every 100 participants in a given year; based on statistical modelling, the researchers determined that the rate of new infections would have been 4.1 for every 100 had the women not been offered the ring. The DREAM trial, which enrolled 940 women from July 2016, had similar findings, with a 54% reduction in the HIV incidence rate. The final results from both studies are expected in 2019.

Adherence was shown to be high in both of the trials, although the measures of adherence were not able to determine whether the women used the ring all of the time, most of the time or just some of the time. The DREAM study showed that more than 90% of the women in the study used the ring at least some of the time, based on residual drug levels, and the HOPE study showed that 89% of returned rings indicated that the ring was used at least some of the time within the previous month.

This is the first time that efficacy of more than 50% has been observed in HIV prevention trials involving only women. Two previous phase III trials presented in 2016—ASPIRE/MTN-020 and the Ring Study/IPM 027—which did include a placebo group showed only modest protection (30%) against HIV infection for women. Women from both ASPIRE and the Ring Study were included in the HOPE and DREAMS trials.

Other scientific advances in HIV prevention presented in recent years include the PROUD and IPERGAY studies, which in 2015 reported an 86% reduction in HIV acquisition among HIV-negative men who took antiretroviral medicines to prevent HIV, the 2011 HPTN 052 trial announcement, which showed that early initiation of antiretroviral therapy can reduce the risk of transmission to an uninfected partner by 96%, and the 2011 Partners PrEP and TDF2 studies, which showed that a daily antiretroviral pill taken by people who do not have HIV infection can reduce their risk of acquiring HIV by up to 73%. The South Africa Orange Farm Intervention Trial, funded by the French Agence Nationale de Recherches sur le SIDA (ANRS) and published in 2005, demonstrated more than a 60% reduction in HIV infections among circumcised men.

“These important breakthroughs show just how critical it is to continue to invest in research and development into new and effective HIV prevention options,” said Mr Sidibé. The latest reports show that in 2016 funding for HIV prevention research and development was its lowest level in a decade, with no indications that investments are set to increase.

UNAIDS stresses that despite the recent scientific discoveries, there is still no single method that is fully protective against HIV. To end the AIDS epidemic, UNAIDS strongly recommends a combination of HIV prevention options. These can include the correct and consistent use of male or female condoms, waiting longer before having sex for the first time, having fewer partners, voluntary medical male circumcision, avoiding penetrative sex, the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis for people at higher risk of HIV infection and ensuring that all people living with HIV have immediate access to antiretroviral medicine.

In 2016/2017* an estimated:

*20.9 million people were accessing antiretroviral therapy in June 2017

36.7 million [30.8 million–42.9 million] people globally were living with HIV

1.8 million [1.6 million–2.1 million] people became newly infected with HIV

1.0 million [830 000–1.2 million] people died from AIDS-related illnesses

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.