CDC Calls for “Urgency” in Combating HIV/AIDS

metroweekly.com:

“Dear Colleague” letter released in advance of December 1, which is recognized as World AIDS Day, Dr. Robyn Neblett Fanfair — the captain of the U.S.

Public Health Service and the acting division director of the Division of HIV Prevention at the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis STD, and TB Prevention — urged health advocates not only to reflect on past progress in combating the disease, but take a more proactive approach in the future. “From the earliest days of the HIV epidemic, passionate, thoughtful action by advocates, communities, clinicians, and public health officials has helped to drive decades of scientific and clinical advances,” Fanfair wrote.Among the successes noted in Fanfair’s letter are the strides the United States made in preventing the transmission of HIV from HIV-positive pregnant women to their children between 2010 and 2019.During that period, the number of cases of mother-to-child transmission dropped to fewer than one case per 100,00 live births, and the transmission rate dropped below 1%, according to a recent CDC-led study.Fanfair also cites CDC data showing that the incidence of HIV has dropped in recent years, with the estimated number of HIV infections in 2021 decreasing by 12% compared to 2017.This was in part driven by a decrease in more than one-third of all new HIV infections among gay and bisexual men between 13 and 24 years old.The decrease has been attributed to increased accessibility of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a biomedical intervention that successfully stops transmission of the virus.A separate CDC report containing preliminary data appears to show a significant uptick in the number of people connected with PrEP, with 36% of the estimated 1.2 million people in.