Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, has called for communities actively working to eradicate the disease to be "recognized and supported as leaders."
"It is communities and their leadership who waged those battles in the '90s and in the 2000s from South Africa to Thailand to Brazil to break the pharma monopoly on their treatment and make it reach everybody," Byanyima told VOA.
She says communities across the world have shown they are prepared to lead and demand more for the most vulnerable.
"Communities monitor how governments deliver and make demands for better services. Don't get in the way of communities. Don't shrink the civic space for communities to work breathing space for them.” She emphasized that communities “are partners to government."
The 2023 UNAIDS report "Let Communities Lead,"says AIDS as a public health threat can be ended by 2030 and is calling on governments and donors to support community-led programing and responses to HIV and AIDS.
The agency says investing in community-led HIV programs has delivered transformational results in countries such as Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa.
Dr. John Nkengasong, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, said countries that have made significant progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS are those that have embraced community initiatives.
"Without the community, there is hardly any vehicle that can reach a broader audience. When a community leads, we make progress," Nkengasong, who oversees the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, told VOA.
"Communities are taking the lead on testing, so that people know their status. Communities are taking the lead on treatment, that is making sure that people stay on treatment," he added.
According to global health agencies, of the 39 million people living with HIV in 2022, more than nine million did not have lifesaving treatment.
Globally, women and girls accounted for 46% of the 1.3 million new infections in 2022. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women accounted for more than 77% of new infections among young people aged 15-24 years, UNAIDS said.
The U.N. children’s agency has raised alarm on the high rate of new HIV infections among adolescent girls.
"It is unacceptable that adolescent girls, who should be planning their futures, continue to bear the heaviest burden of HIV infection," UNICEF Associate Director of HIV/AIDS Anurita Bains wrote in a statement marking World AIDS Day.
"We — the U.N., communities, governments and organizations — must eradicate the obstacles that make HIV a threat to their health and wellbeing," Bains added.
To meet the 2030 goal to eliminate HIV as a public health threat, UNAIDS and other partners are calling for communities to be core in all HIV programs and plans, for the initiatives to be fully funded and for barriers to community leadership roles to be removed.
"We must not drop the ball on HIV AIDS. Why? Because it is the one success story we have where we have a real chance to achieve the (Sustainable Development Goal) target and to reach the end of this pandemic," Byanyima said.
VOA's Tatenda Gumbo compiled this report with contributions from VOA's James Butty and Linord Moudou.
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