Ending HIV transmission by 2030 ‘realistic,’ says Harvard expert Max Essex
After four decades of fighting AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus that causes it, the U.S. government is pressing forward with a plan to end HIV transmission in the country by 2030. The plan targets about 48 “hotspots” where transmission is concentrated with enhanced surveillance and tracking, as well as stepped up prevention and treatment efforts. It dovetails with a similar international goal supported by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which also seeks to greatly reduce transmission by 2030. Max Essex, the Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences Emeritus and chair of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health AIDS Initiative, has been on the epidemic’s front lines from its start in the early 1980s. He was one of the first scientists to hypothesize that a retrovirus was the cause of AIDS and conducted early work that led to one of the first blood tests for HIV....