US: Ending the HIV Epidemic in the US: Why Now Is the Right Time

Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been fighting HIV/AIDS since the 1980s when the virus was first discovered.

Now, thanks to a joint effort by multiple arms of the US Department of Health and Human Services, he’s making headway.

Highlighted in President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this year, the plan to end the HIV epidemic in the United States is in effect with the goal of achieving a 75% reduction in new HIV infections over the next 5 years and a 90% reduction over the next 10 years.

With 1.1 million people living with HIV, 14% of whom are unaware of their infections, and 38,000 new infections each year, it’s clear HIV is still a problem across the United States. But unlike previous efforts to tamp down on new diagnoses, the new plan features simultaneous cooperation from the National Institutes of Health, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Indian Health Service, among other agencies.

“We don’t have any excuses anymore since we have the tools...this is the right people in the right place at the right time,” Dr. Fauci told the audience at the opening session of the Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2019) on March 4, 2019, in Seattle, Washington. “[It] is the first time an accelerated effort to implement treatment and prevention in the United States has been simultaneously undertaken by multiple HHS agencies that are focusing on highly specific and concentrated target populations.”

We now have the science and the tools to squash the rate of new HIV infections in the United States; we just have to tackle the implementation gap, Dr. Fauci said. Read more via Contagion Live



ENDING THE HIV EPIDEMIC: A PLAN FOR THE UNITED STATES

Author(s): 

Anthony S. Fauci1

1NIAID, Bethesda, MD, USA

Abstract Body: 

This presentation will describe the newly announced U.S. Department of Health and Human Services initiative targeting the ongoing HIV epidemic in the United States with the goals of decreasing the number of HIV incident infections by 75% within 5 years, and then by 90% within 10 years. This coordinated, multi-agency initiative will focus on geographic and demographic hotspots in 48 counties, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico where the majority of new HIV cases are reported, as well as in 7 states with a disproportionate occurrence of HIV cases in rural areas. This new initiative builds on the scientific findings over the past 4 decades in HIV prevention, treatment, and care. Under the leadership of the Assistant Secretary for Health, HHS agencies including NIH, CDC, HRSA, and IHS will coordinate their programs and resources to implement with local, regional, and state partners evidence-based strategies to diagnose, treat, prevent, and rapidly detect and respond to the continuing HIV spread in the U.S. This HHS initiative will focus on interrupting or disrupting the kinetics of HIV spread and provide a way forward to ending the epidemic in this country.

 

Session Number: 

OS-1

Session Title: 

OPENING SESSION

Presenting Author: 

Anthony Fauci

Presenter Institution: 

NIH

Webcast Link: 

http://www.croiwebcasts.org/p/2019croi/2010