AVAC report calls for greater access to combination prevention strategies, protection of research funding

AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention on Tuesday "released its annual report that calls for an ambitious pace of funding, implementation, and research," VOA News reports, noting the report, titled "Achieving the End: One Year and Counting," "calls for a three-part agenda for ending AIDS: Deliver, Demonstrate, and Develop" (DeCapua, 11/27). The report's recommendations "address urgent, unresolved challenges that threaten the delivery of powerful new HIV prevention methods that could help dramatically reduce the 2.5 million new HIV infections that occur worldwide every year," an AVAC press release states, continuing, "They include critical actions to speed access to HIV treatment, voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and to safeguard vital new research on vaccines, microbicides, other HIV prevention options and a cure." According to the press release, AVAC Executive Director Mitchell Warren said, "Right now, the world isn't moving as fast as it should be to begin ending the epidemic. There is still time to get back on a winning pace but only with focused, aggressive action now. This can be the year that HIV prevention begins to achieve its potential -- in fact, it has to be" (11/27).