Good morning! There is a full day of sessions and activities ahead, and the Daily Digest guides you through it. Make the most of the last day of the Global Village and poster exhibition!
07:00 CEST Satellite sessions get underway. 08:30 CEST The plenary, “HIV prevention strategies”, updates on where we are with HIV vaccines and where we are going, PrEP implementation in low- and middle-income countries, and community-based research for advancing PrEP access for key populations. It concludes with IAS Executive Director Birgit Poniatowski awarding the new round of CIPHER and IPHASA grants.
AIDS 2024 will be a critical opportunity to take stock of progress in the HIV response towards meeting the 95-95-95 targets, with some countries possibly getting there before 2025; a symposium examines the experiences of countries, cities and programmes in achieving these results.
18:00 CEST Satellite sessions take place. The IAS is dedicated to fostering a welcoming environment and encouraging debate and dialogue among all conference participants. The IAS upholds freedom of expression as a fundamental principle in our efforts to end HIV as a threat to public health and individual well-being and promote inclusive participation in our conferences. Cure: Delegates learnt more about the “next Berlin patient”, the seventh person known to have been cured of HIV. This 60-year-old adult male had both leukaemia and HIV, received a stem cell transplant for leukaemia in 2015, and stopped taking antiretroviral treatment for HIV in 2018. More than five years later, he remains in HIV remission. In HIV cure cases to date, the stem cell donors had naturally inherited two copies of the CCR5-delta-32 mutation – one from each parent (homozygous). This is the first instance in which the donor had inherited just one copy of the gene (heterozygous), which could have promising implications for more scalable HIV cure strategies. Heterozygous donors are far more common than people who have the homozygous mutation. The damage that stigma does: Analysis of data from 842,169 people, including 70,109 people living with HIV, across 33 African countries links stigma with reduced engagement at every stage of HIV care. Researchers analysed three stigma measures: discriminatory attitudes towards people living with HIV (reported by 36%); shame of associating with people living with HIV (18%); and perceived HIV stigma (79%). All measures were associated with lower past-year HIV testing. As community-level discriminatory attitudes increased by 50%, people living with HIV were 17% less likely to be on ART and had 15% lower viral load suppression. Long-acting prevention: Full data from the PURPOSE 1 trial, evaluating six-monthly injectable lenacapavir for HIV prevention, was presented at a Co-Chairs’ Choice session, confirming that it demonstrated 100% efficacy for HIV prevention in cisgender women. The PURPOSE clinical trials were developed with communities affected by HIV around the world. “If approved and delivered – rapidly, affordably, and equitably – to those who need or want it, this long-acting tool could help accelerate global progress in HIV prevention,” IAS President and AIDS 2024 International Co-Chair Sharon Lewin said. Injectable long-acting cabotegravir (CAB-LA) is highly effective for HIV prevention, but real-world implementation studies among men and women in Africa are lacking. In rural Uganda and Kenya, more than half of participants in the SEARCH Dynamic Choice HIV prevention trial chose to start CAB-LA over oral PrEP or PEP. CAB-LA, the researchers say, is a popular choice for men and women, and feasible, in these settings. Long-acting HIV prevention is also a popular choice in Europe: the PROTECT survey of 8,642 men who have sex with men who are not living with HIV have a high level of interest and intention (up to 74%) to use long-acting PrEP if made available. This was particularly the case among current oral PrEP users (80%). What if we don’t reach the targets? Financing of the HIV response is under huge pressure. New UNAIDS-led projections set out the cost of inaction and failure to meet global targets to end the AIDS epidemic. It found that if we fail to meet the 95-95-95 targets, the human cost will include nearly 35 million new acquisitions and nearly 18 million AIDS-related deaths from 2021 to 2050. The economic cost of inaction will be more than USD 8,200 per person in low- and middle-income countries by 2050. “The idle position is not an option,” the researchers concluded. Integrated care: The HIV epidemic in Ukraine is concentrated among people who inject drugs. Two-year outcomes of a randomized controlled trial with 1,459 participants concluded that integrating services in primary care clinics had better comprehensive outcomes relative to specialty addiction centres for people who inject drugs, confirming the need to integrate care for people who inject drugs who are vulnerable to acquiring HIV and TB. Community empowerment and support take centre stage on the last day of the AIDS 2024 Global Village. - Pop into the Silver Zone, which puts older people living with HIV first. It hosts a wide range of activities, from intergenerational dialogues and panel discussions to art projects, workshops, film screenings and storytelling.
- Also stop at the Sex Worker Networking Zone, a meeting hub for sex workers and a space for those who want to learn more about the global sex work movement.
- Browse photography at Through Positive Eyes, which aims to banish the stigma of living with HIV. The booth doubles as a space for live photo-storytelling by Ukrainian artivists.
- Find out about Check-Mobile, which sets up testing facilities and linkage to care in the German county, Schleswig-Holstein.
See you at the official closing of the Global Village at 17:00 CEST. It bows out – not quietly! – with a U=U Dance Party to celebrate the game-changing truth of U=U and creativity of the U=U movement. Listen to the latest episode of HIV unmuted, the award-winning IAS podcast, on the game-changing research from AIDS 2024. Sharon Lewin, the IAS President and AIDS 2024 International Co-Chair, sits down with our new host, Juan Michael Porter II. They delve into a broad range of exciting science, from long-acting injectables to new research on doxycycline prophylaxis to advances in cure research, including the “next Berlin Patient”. The rapporteur summaries are your go-to resources for the highlights presented at AIDS 2024. Thanks to the AIDS 2024 team of experts, delegates can access daily recaps by each programme track here. Today is also the last day of the poster exhibition. Some on display today are: The main exhibition will remain open until Friday 13:30 CEST. JIAS supplement just launched Just launched! Journal of the International AIDS Society supplement, “Re-shaping landscapes to support embedded, Programme Science to improve population level impact for HIV and sexually transmitted infections programming: A call for transformative action”. This collection of articles presents work from various global contexts and uses examples to demonstrate the operationalization of programme science. Read for free and join the satellite session at 18:00 CEST.
Tune in to the AIDS 2024 Live Show at 08:30 CEST daily to learn about conference developments and what lies ahead. Host Karl Schmid will be live from the Global Village and joined by leading voices in the HIV response. Today's scheduled guests include: - Melanie Ott, University of California San Francisco
- Laura Waters, The Mortimer Market Centre
- Milosz Parczewski, Pomeranian Medical University
Meet the IAS change makers Each day, the Daily Digest follows the IAS change makers at AIDS 2024: recipients of our grant, fellowship or mentorship opportunities. They are the next generation of HIV researchers, advocates and healthcare providers improving the lives of people living with and affected by HIV. Today’s change makers are Elizabeth Atieno Onyango and Jakkrapatara Boonruang. |
