This was one of the most frank and informative webinar I’ve ever moderated. Speakers brought clear, candid realities to the persistent gaps in the HIV cascade. The data on when we lost direction and focus on testing, treatment, and viral suppression (2019) was sobering. There were urgent calls for institutionalised engagement between people living with HIV and parliamentarians, and for renewed advocacy that treats RETENTION in care as the vital link between diagnosis, treatment, and sustained viral suppression for all PLHIV. We must be outraged that 570,000 people living with HIV died in 2025.
Be deeply concerned that 9 million still have not accessed treatment and that children remain part of this population. And curious to know why 10.6 million people living with HIV are not virally suppressed despite biomedical progress. People living with HIV must demand that leaders in the HIV response return focus of HIV to the cascade gap, strengthen retention, and move closer to epidemic control and the lives we can still save. OUR LIVES. Progress in the HIV response should be recognised. But it cannot come at the expense of the gaps and barriers that the data continues to show year after year. Leaders in the HIV response must end AIDS-related deaths. Huge thanks to all the speakers and participants and to @AHFcares for the collaboration #PLHIVLeadersNow @SboNkosiZA @cedricnini