In October 2014, the World Health Organization launched the 90-90-90 treatment goals. These goals proposed that by 2020, 90% of people with HIV will be diagnosed, 90% of diagnosed people will be in care; 90% of people receiving care will have durable HIV suppression. Achievement of the 90-90-90 targets will mean that at least 73% of all people with HIV have viral suppression, a large enough proportion to have a major impact on rates of HIV-related mortality and new infections.
With little fanfare, WHO announced that Sweden has become the first country to achieve the UNAIDS/World Health Organization (WHO) 90-90-90 target, as research published in HIV Medicine shows. At the end of 2015, 90% of HIV cases in Sweden were diagnosed, 99.8% of people were linked to care and 95% of people taking antiretrovirals for at least six months had a viral load below 50 copies/ml.
“We believe that Sweden is the first country to achieve the UNAIDS/WHO 90-90-90 goal,” comment the investigators.
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has dramatically reduced rates of HIV-related illness and death and the infectiousness of people taking treatment.
For people to benefit fully from treatment they must engage with a multi-step care cascade: diagnosis, linkage to care, engagement with care, initiation of ART and viral suppression.
However, in many settings, even in richer countries, sup-optimal levels of engagement with HIV care mean that many people are not benefitting from ART (antiretroviral therapy), meaning there are avoidable HIV-related deaths and there continues to be high rates of new infections. Information on people in care was obtained from the Swedish InfCare HIV Cohort Study. By the end of 2015, data on 6946 diagnosed individuals were included in the study’s database.
Surveillance data from the Public Health Agency of Sweden indicated that 90% of people with HIV living in Sweden have been diagnosed.
For more information, follow the link to HIV Medicine
Credit: Michael Carter
Published: 14 September 2016
