Keep the promise of universal access

What is Universal Access?

Universal access is a goal. Universal access means that everyone that needs AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support will have it. Prevention may be in the form of access to condoms, clean blood supply, or the drugs that stop pregnant women from infecting their children at birth. Treatment includes the antiretroviral drugs that stop the onset of AIDS, and also the medicines that fight the opportunistic infections that result when AIDS attacks the immune system. Care and support includes ensuring that those struggling with AIDS can receive all the attention and services they require to help them. Fighting AIDS means that all four of these need to be provided - hence the phrase access to prevention, treatment, care and support.

Realising the Millennium Development Goal on HIV/AIDS (MDGs) - to halt and reverse the spread of the epidemic by 2015 - requires far greater access to HIV prevention services and AIDS treatment, care and support than is currently available. The current pace of most national responses is far too slow in reaching all in need of HIV information and services.

The reality of the situation is that if we do not quickly deliver far more comprehensive prevention programmes and ensure universal access to treatment, care and support for people living with HIV or AIDS we will fail to meet the MDGs.

In response to this, at the 2005 World Summit, UN member states agreed to, « developing and implementing a package for HIV prevention, treatment and care with the aim of coming as close as possible to the goal of universal access to treatment by 2010 for all those who need it. » This is not a target invented by the UN. Campaigners first put this on the agenda by pushing the G8 in Gleneagles 2005 to commit to universal access. We all now have a serious stake and responsibility in the universal access process.

Universal access is, in some ways, a successor to the three by five initiative which was, launched by UNAIDS and WHO in 2003. Three by five was a global target to provide three million people living with HIV and AIDS in low and middle-income countries with life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment (ART) by the end of 2005. It was a step towards the goal of making universal access of HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment accessible for all who need them as a human right.

There have been many successes and drawbacks so far with universal access. Civil society has found a common voice on moving forward with universal access in some countries. In many places national AIDS authorities worked in partnership with civil society to develop plans and targets for reaching universal access. Many countries have set ambitious, yet hopefully realistic, national level targets for universal access, but there is still work to be done. Please click here to read more about national targets.

For more information about universal access, please visit www.ua2010.org.