Prevention must be at the forefront

This decade could be the beginning of the end of the HIV epidemic, but not without more support for HIV prevention, write Peter Piot of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Mitchell Warren of AVAC in a commentary. They point out that the goals for HIV prevention are even more ambitious than those for HIV treatment, yet they have been relegated to the background. For example, UNAIDS goal of providing an additional 27 million male circumcisions in sub-Saharan Africa by 2021 would require a massive scale-up of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programmes even as funding remains stagnant. Citing a “massive failure to deliver effective prevention,” they call for greater commitment to providing proven strategies such as VMMC, pre-exposure prophylaxis, condoms, and provision of clean injecting equipment, and to research on new tools such as vaccines and cures (STAT, 18 July 2016).