Office of National AIDS Policy Blog

Secretary Clinton to AIDS 2012: “We Will Not Back Off, We Will Not Back Down”

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that Secretary Clinton electrified the AIDS 2012 audience with her keynote address at this week’s conference. Her speech was a perfect combination of substance and inspiration, and the enthusiastic reception made it clear that she had hit all the right notes.

Last November, of course, she articulated the goal, made possible by recent scientific advances, of an AIDS-free generation. This laid the groundwork for President Obama’s groundbreaking announcement on World AIDS Day of ambitious new combination prevention goals for PEPFAR, including a 50% increase in our treatment goal, to 6 million by the end of fiscal year 2013.

In her remarks this week, the Secretary updated the world on PEPFAR’s progress since then. We’ve dramatically increased the pace of treatment enrollment, reaching nearly 4.5 million with treatment through the first half of this fiscal year – putting us on track to meet the 6 million goal on time. One of the other goals was to reach 1.5 million HIV-positive pregnant women with services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV – and we’re on target to achieve that as well, reaching 370,000 women in the first half of FY 2012. We’ve also performed 400,000 voluntary medical male circumcisions in that same time frame – with an accelerating pace as countries come to understand what a cost-effective, smart investment it is. Looking to the future, Secretary Clinton announced that she has asked me to produce, by World AIDS Day this year, a blueprint for the next steps in America’s contribution to an AIDS-free generation.

Lifting Up All Women

Ed. note: This first appeared in The Huffington Post

This week, the United States is hosting the 19th International AIDS Conference. As we welcome 22,000 leaders, advocates and experts from around the world with the goal of ending HIV/AIDS, I thought it was important not to forget those living with HIV/AIDS here in our home town. Among the 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, African Americans make up almost half of all cases, despite representing only 14% of the U.S. population. Women comprise 23% of new HIV infections in this country, and African American women make up nearly two-thirds of these cases. Here in D.C., we have one of the highest HIV rates in the country, with 2.7% of all D.C. residents living with HIV/AIDS, and women comprise 28% of the cases. Of the 4,000 women living with HIV in D.C., 92% are African American. Compared with men in D.C., women living with HIV are still more likely to be tested later in the course of their disease, and are less likely to be linked to care.

On Saturday, R&B legend Alicia Keys and I joined the Kaiser Family Foundation and the National Black Women's HIV/AIDS Network for an inspirational meeting with a community gathering of courageous black women living with HIV/AIDS. Our goal was to lift their stories up to provide insight and guidance for our efforts to end HIV/AIDS here at home.

For so many of us, our commitment to fighting AIDS comes from the heart. Every day, I carry with me the pain of watching the excruciating death of my sister-in-law, Julie, eighteen years ago. Julie went for months without being properly diagnosed because it simply never occurred to her doctor to check for HIV. By the time she was diagnosed, it was too late. Julie left behind a devastated husband and a five-year-old daughter, Tracy. Tracy, who is now all grown up, accompanied me on Saturday.