At its 39th meeting in December 2016, the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) decided that “HIV Prevention 2020: a global partnership for delivery” would be the subject of the 40th Board thematic segment. The focus comes at a critical time. Due to stagnating new HIV infection trends there is a sense of urgency that HIV prevention needs to be re- invigorated if global targets are to be achieved. The focus also provides an opportunity to consider how and to what extent the embedding of HIV interventions into wider efforts to achieve the SDGs could accelerate progress.
The segment follows a series of previous Board meetings that reaffirmed the importance of HIV prevention. In 2000, for instance, the PCB recommended that governments, bilateral partners, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) support the acceleration of prevention in all affected areas through country-based regional and global efforts. In 2005, UNAIDS published its policy position paper, Intensifying HIV prevention (UNAIDS/PCB (16)/04.3). The PCB urged the Joint Programme to take the lead in intensifying HIV prevention, and emphasized the need to translate HIV prevention into effective actions at country level and address the fundamental drivers of the epidemic. In 2012—five years ago—an entire PCB thematic segment was devoted to “Combination prevention: addressing the urgent need to re-invigorate HIV prevention response globally by scaling and achieving synergies to halt and begin to reverse the spread of the AIDS”, in line with the Millennium Development Goals.