The latest report from UNAIDS shows great progress against the disease

THE aphorism, “No news is good news”, was never more apposite than for AIDS. In the 1980s and 1990s, when HIV, the virus that causes it, was on the rampage, AIDS was seldom out of the headlines. Now, it is seldom in them. Antiretroviral drugs have all but abolished death-by-AIDS in the rich world—and, though that is by no means true in poorer places, particularly some in sub-Saharan Africa, even there mortality is falling fast. Having no headlines at all, however, might suggest that the problem is over. It isn’t. And to remind people of that, UNAIDS, the international agency charged with combating the disease, publishes from time to time reports that are designed to generate a few.

The latest such came out on November 24th, in anticipation of World AIDS Day on December 1st. It shows that, by and large, things are going to plan. Though 1.2m people died from AIDS in 2014, that number was down from 1.3m the previous year and from a peak of 2m in 2005. This fall in the death rate, combined with continued new infections, does mean the number of those infected has increased, to 36.9m from 36.2m in 2013. But the actual number of new infections is down—to 2m in 2014 compared with 2.1m in 2013 and 3.1m at their peak in 2000. Much of the credit for this goes to the widespread deployment of antiretrovirals. In June 2015 15.8m of those infected were on these drugs, up from 13.6m in June 2014. Equally important, the coffers that pay for those drugs (and much else AIDS-related) are full. Last year, more than $20 billion was raised for spending on AIDS in poor and middle-income countries. This year it looks as if the figure will be between $22 billion and $24 billion.

The aim in the short term—meaning, by 2020—is what UNAIDS (which has a fondness for snappy number-based catchphrases) calls 90-90-90. By this the agency means that 90% of those infected will be aware of the fact (an obvious prerequisite for seeking treatment); 90% of those who are so aware will have sought and received treatment; and, for 90% of those being treated, the drugs actually will have had the intended effect of suppressing the patient’s viral load (the amount of HIV in a bodily fluid) to the point where it is undetectable. A quick piece of mental arithmetic shows that the overall aim is thus to have suppressed the viral load of almost three-quarters of those infected.

Crucially, viral-load suppression not only stops the life-threatening symptoms of AIDS appearing, but also makes it much less likely that an infected individual will pass the virus on. This, plus other transmission-breaking techniques—male circumcision (which is 60% protective), the use of condoms and even prophylactic drug treatment for those at particular risk—is expected to continue bringing the new-infection rate down sharply over the next five years.

After 2020, though, things get harder. By then, most of the low-hanging fruit on the tree of prevention will have been picked and the rate of decline both of new cases and of deaths is expected to level off. The longer-term goal, announced by UNAIDS this time last year, is to “end the epidemic” by 2030. The agency defines this as reducing the number of AIDS-related deaths to 10% of that which prevailed in 2010. That will be tough, even if it achieves another stated objective for that year—95-95-95, or 86% of those infected having suppressed viral loads. The headlines, irregular though they may be, will not disappear altogether anytime soon.