Putting Children at the Center of the End of AIDS

The global community has failed to adequately address and prioritize pediatric HIV treatment. This failure undermines efforts to tackle this disease and makes the global goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 effectively impossible. Chip Lyons, EGPAF president and CEO calls for children to be front and center in the fight to end HIV/AIDS in this Lancet Global Health blog. Follow @Chip_Lyons

In the 15 years since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted, the number of people accessing antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV/AIDS has dramatically increased, from less than 1 million people to 12.9 million in 2013.

Despite the global effort to scale up treatment, children have largely been left behind. The consequences of this failure to act are grim: only one quarter of the 3.2 million children living with HIV were able to access treatment in 2013, and today, like every day, more than 500 children will die of AIDS.

Quite simply, the global community has failed to adequately address and prioritize pediatric HIV treatment around the world.

Ending AIDS in children will require an even bigger global commitment in the years to come than ever before. Without investment now, the challenges will only grow more difficult and the obstacles harder to surmount.

We must have the ambition to rise to meet this challenge, until no child has AIDS.

Read the full article on The Lancet Global Health Blog.