The right to health is the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This includes the right of everyone, including people living with and affected by HIV, to the prevention and treatment of ill health, to make decisions about one’s own health and to be treated with respect and dignity and without discrimination.

The western and central Africa catch-up plan is a political instrument and a compact between countries and the international community that supports countries’ strategies and plans to quickly address bottlenecks, accelerate the national responses and reach a trajectory to achieve the 90–90–90 targets by 2020. Deriving from the western and central Africa catch-up plan, the country plans are supplementing national strategies and existing plans with the aim of increasing antiretroviral treatment uptake and saving lives.

Discrimination in health care settings is widespread across the world and takes many forms. It violates the most fundamental human rights protected in international treaties and in national laws and constitutions.

The primary purpose of antiretroviral therapy is to keep people living with HIV in good health. In the large majority of people living with HIV, antiretroviral medication can be chosen that reduce the amount of HIV in the blood to levels that are undetectable by standard laboratory tests. 

UNAIDS has collected and published information on the state of the world’s HIV epidemic for the past 20 years. This information has shaped and guided the development of the response to HIV in regions, countries and cities worldwide. This edition of UNAIDS data contains the highlights of the very latest data on the world’s response to HIV, consolidating a small part of the huge volume of data collected, analysed and refined by UNAIDS over the years.

The pages that follow tell the powerful and moving stories of people who are living with or affected by HIV and who have experienced positive improvements in their lives because of the synergies between the AIDS response and the related SDGs. Now more than ever I believe that we have the means, the science and the unity of commitment and spirit to deliver on the SDGs and to transform our world by 2030.