Did you know – despite everything we’ve learned about HIV, the number of new infections each year is close to what it was in the mid-1990s: the total figure today is 2.7 million? Antiretroviral treatment (ART) helps keep HIV at low levels within the body, but ART can have side effects and must be taken every day for a lifetime. What’s more, access to life-saving treatment can be an issue for people living with HIV in developing countries. Thanks to programs like the Global Fund and PEPFAR, treatment is increasingly available, but it still only reaches a third of people who need it to survive.

We must continue to extend current prevention, care and treatment options to as many people as possible to mitigate AIDS here and now, but we must also invest in the future to bring the epidemic to an end. Continued investment in prevention research, to include new tools like vaccines, microbicides and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), will produce net savings in the long term – and save lives.

In fact, only vaccines have historically ended major viral epidemics. They are proven to be cost-effective and practical. There will be an AIDS vaccine in our lifetime, and we must continue the search.

So today, on HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, I urge you to become informed about AIDS vaccine research. We all have a role to play whether it is as advocates, volunteers, health professionals or researchers.

• Checkout NIAID’s information hub around HIV Vaccine Awareness Day
• The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has a new website, which features an interview with Dr Anthony S. Fauci (Director, NIAID)
• Global Health TV recently posted four interviews with leading AIDS advocates about their commitment to finding an AIDS vaccine
• IAVI President & CEO, Seth Berkley, recently gave a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) as part of their Global Health Policy Center’s speaker series

For those of you reading this blog who are already involved – today (and every day) is an opportunity to say thank you!

-Nicole Schiegg, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative–Washington, D.C.

Here’s a little known fact. Hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, developing countries are also hard at work on new tools to prevent HIV. Those who bear the biggest burden of the AIDS pandemic are doing their part to ensure that we have a vaccine for future generations. HIV Vaccine Awareness Day is an occasion to thank the thousands of volunteers, community members, health professionals, and scientists who are working together to find a safe and effective AIDS vaccine. It is also an opportunity to underscore that supporting science and technology are core elements of good development policy.

Dr. Seth Berkley, IAVI’s President and CEO, blogged yesterday “that the Obama administration should extend its fervor for science to its foreign aid policy, putting science and technology at the heart of U.S. assistance to the developing world.” The full post can be found here.

For those of you in the Washington, DC area today, May 11th please come listen to leading African scientists talk about the novel research they are doing to help advance AIDS vaccine science. The Global Health Council, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) are co hosting a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill at 2 PM in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 419. For more information, please contact: Sara Jane Muratori at smuratori@iavi.org.

If you are not in DC, please checkout Global Health TV. Leading AIDS advocates share their commitment to finding a vaccine: Dr David Kihumuro Apuuli, director-general of the Uganda AIDS Commission and Dr Seth Berkley, IAVI. Additional interviews will be posted leading up to HIV Vaccine Awareness Day.

-Nicole Schiegg, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative – Washington, DC