Publication:

Can India achieve UNAIDS’ target by 2030?

The world is embarking on a fast-track strategy to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. UNAIDS is targeted towards achieving the 95-95-95 strategy by 2025. Scaling up prevention, testing and treatment services towards HIV/AIDS is paramount in achieving these targets. To understand the status of India in achieving these targets, review of trials registered in the CTRI registry was done and found that among the 155 included trials, most (n=45, 29%) of the trials were drug trails, few were vaccine trials (n=6, 3.8%). Out of 155 studies, forty-one (20%) were in line to reach UNAIDS’ targets. The primary focus of those studies was improving CD4 counts and suppression of viral load (third target of UNAIDS’) (n=12, 7.7%), and the minimal focus was on promoting treatment adherence (second target of UNAIDS’) (n=11, 7%) and promotion of HIV testing (first target of UNAIDS’) (n=4, 2.5%). As prevention is always better than care, research should be encouraged towards prevention of HIV, which in turn facilitates achieving UNAIDS’ 2025 and 2030 targets.