‘How can we explain to young people today that we could not prevent them from becoming infected?'11/12/2019
 World Aids Day Seminar in the Belgian Senate. Copyright Sensoa. For World Aids Day, the ‘Parliamentarians for the 2030 Agenda’ invited UNAIDS Brussels Representative Dr. Jantine Jacobi, Burundian youth representative Fabien Ndikuriyo, Stéphanie Drèze of MSF and Dr. Gert Scheerder of Sensoa to discuss the HIV epidemic worldwide, in Belgium and in Belgium’s partner countries.
 HIV mural in Antwerp. Copyright: Sensoa This year Belgium will preside the UNAIDS constituency with Portugal, Luxemburg and the Netherlands in the Programme Coordination Board (PCB) of UNAIDS, the governing board of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV. The UNAIDS PCB sets the overall policies and priorities for UNAIDS and decides on the organisation’s planning and execution. Challenges discussed within the board include how to keep up international support for HIV response, but can also include discussions on the impact of big donor countries’ policies on the HIV/AIDS response, think of the detrimental effect of the reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy (or Global Gag Rule) by the US on integrated SRHR-HIV service delivery in countries in the Global South.
 Copyright: UNAIDS 75% of all people living with HIV know their HIV status, but increased efforts are needed to reach the 9.4 million people living with HIV who are not aware that they are living with the virus, UNAIDS 2018 reports shows.
On 26 July 2018, UNAIDS published the latest statistics on the global HIV epidemic. In 2017, an estimated 36.9 million people were living with HIV. 21 million people have access to treatment, a record high. Consequently, the number of AIDS related deaths has dropped, to 940,000 in 2017. The biggest successes lay in Eastern and South-Eastern Africa, with a 42% decline in the number of AIDS related deaths since 2010. They reflect the successful scale-up of treatment in the region. Access to treatment also improved in most other regions, although (much) more modestly.
 More than 16,000 researchers, advocates, policy makers, funders and community leaders from more than 160 countries came together in Amsterdam for the 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018). They are all committed to achieving a world free from HIV. These are the main takeaways:
 UNAIDS’ latest report shows the world is moving forward in achieving the 90-90-90 agenda. The targets were launched in 2014 to accelerate progress so that by 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV have access to sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90% of all people with access to antiretroviral therapy are virally suppressed.
 At IAS 2017, the academic HIV conference in Paris, the start of a large-scale efficacy study (phase III) into a preventive HIV vaccine in South Africa was announced (HVTN 702). It is the first efficacy study of this scale since 2009.
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