Jo Biddle

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has unveiled an ambitious US blueprint on how to realise the dream of an Aids-free generation, aiming to see virtually no babies born with HIV by 2015.

“Scientific advances and their successful implementation have brought the world to a tipping point in the fight against Aids” the 54-page document says.

Speaking at a launch to mark World Aids Day, Clinton stressed that challenges still exist as the global community seeks to “change the course of this pandemic and usher in an Aids-free generation.”

Antiretroviral drugs have been hugely successful in cutting the rate of HIV transmission from pregnant women to their unborn babies or via breast-feeding, as well as in helping HIV-positive patients from developing Aids.

Some 1.7 million still die every year from Aids-related illnesses.

But in the vision of an Aids-free generation, almost no child is born with HIV; as they grow up, they are at lower risk of becoming infected; and if they do get HIV, they have access to treatment to halt its progression towards Aids.

In a message for World Aids Day, President Barack Obama said the global community should come together “to remember those we have lost, and to renew our commitment to end the pandemic once and for all”.

US Global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby said that some 390,000 children are born at the moment every year with HIV, primarily in about 22 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Taking a cocktail of three antiretroviral drugs cut the risk of a mother transmitting HIV to her baby to less than two percent, he said. It also allowed her to breast-feed and protected her in future pregnancies in countries where many women had between five to seven children.

“Now we will not get to zero,” Goosby warned, saying many women in developing countries never enter prenatal care. But he hoped by 2015 that the numbers of babies born with HIV would drop globally below 40,000.