Harry to join Sir Elton John at Aids awareness conference

Of this investment, $40 million is focused on keeping girls in secondary school, which dramatically reduces their vulnerability to HIV infection, and almost half of these education-focused resources are directed to Malawi.

Globally in 2015, there were on average 29 new infections an hour among those in this age group.

The rock star spoke at a global AIDS conference in South Africa that has also attracted philanthropist Bill Gates, actress Charlize Theron and Britain’s Prince Harry.

“It is impossible to say exactly how far we are, but one thing we can say is that over the last seven years we have made important strides in the direction of getting a vaccine”, he said, “but getting an HIV vaccine will probably be one of the most important and hard scientific challenges in all of HIV research”. In Europe, Russia and Ukraine had the highest rates, while Cambodia had the highest rates in Asia. Furthermore, the proportion of people living with HIV on ART increased rapidly between 2005 and 2015, from 6.4% to 38.6% for men, and from 3.3% to 42.4% for women.

“Development assistance for HIV/AIDS is stagnating and health resources in many low-income countries are expected to plateau over the next 15 years”.

The fight against the disease was far from over and required a focused and concerted effort to better the current situation, Lake said.

“Everyone in population health – researchers, policymakers, practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, advocates, and others – needs to understand that even if more people are living with HIV, we can not end AIDS without stopping new infections”, Murray added. Dr Wang warned that at this rate, achieving the 90-90-90 goals – aim for 90 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status, 90 per cent of people diagnosed with HIV receiving antiretroviral therapy, and 90 per cent of people receiving antiretroviral therapy experiencing viral suppression – by 2020 was a distant reality. Demonstrating the US government’s leadership toward reaching this goal, today, PEPFAR, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson and ViiV Healthcare, announced investing a combined $85 million investment to support 56 DREAMS Innovation Challenge winners* in 10 sub-Saharan African countries.

Public health facilities can offer generic versions of PrEP for $100 a year or less, he said.

Although scientists ultimately hope to license an HIV vaccine, they acknowledge that it will take much longer than the latest trial to make that happen. The study reveals that there are still large uncertainties and gaps in knowledge about the HIV incidence in many settings. “PrEP has to be part of the puzzle for ending HIV”.