When I took office in 2001, the situation with HIV/AIDS on the African continent and elsewhere was dire. A group of advisers including Condi Rice, Josh Bolten and Mike Gerson encouraged me to act before an entire generation was lost.

I believe that every life has dignity and value. I also believe that of those to whom much is given, much is required. So we developed a plan with clear objectives and accountability, and we got to work.

You may not have heard of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). But you should: It has saved more lives than any other US government policy in the 21st century. And now, for the first time in the program’s history, it is at risk of losing a critical vote in Congress — for reasons that say a lot about today’s Republican Party.

Ukraine, in addition to a war with Russia, also faces an HIV epidemic. As of 2021, an estimated 240,000 Ukrainians are HIV-positive, 100,000 of them living in regions now impacted by fighting. The country also has one of the world’s highest rates of tuberculosis (TB), a respiratory infection that, prior to COVID-19, killed more people worldwide than any other infectious disease. TB and HIV share comorbidities, and TB is one of the most likely causes of death for a person living with HIV.

A 66-year-old man in Southern California and a woman in her 70s in Spain are the latest in a small group of people who appear to have beaten their HIV infections, providing researchers new clues to a possible cure at a time when Covid-19 and other crises are slowing progress against the spreading virus.

Some of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development could increase the risk of acquiring HIV, warned a group of researchers in the The Lancet medical journal Monday, potentially leading to an increase in infections as vaccines are rolled out to vulnerable populations around the world. 

Observed every December 1, World AIDS Day is a grim reminder that while we’re trying to constrain COVID-19, humanity is still in the midst of multiple pandemics—and one of them has already killed about 33 million people over four decades.


In 2019, according to UNAIDS, an estimated 38 million people were living with HIV globally and “around 690,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide.” The encouraging news—as encouraging as such lethal news can be—is that 2019’s mortality marked a 60 percent reduction since 2004, the peak year of AIDS deaths.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday falsely suggested that scientists have developed a vaccine for AIDS, the late stage of HIV infection in which the virus badly damages the immune system.

“They’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine,” Trump said during a press conference on police reform, referring to scientists. “As you know, there’s various things, and now various companies are involved.”

Trump later appeared to backtrack those comments, saying, “AIDS was a death sentence, and now people live a life with a pill. It’s an incredible thing.”

The president of the Human Rights Campaign, Alphonso David, has called President Trump the “worst president on LGBTQ issues ever.” Yes, seriously.

But nobody else should take that claim seriously.