Will Ethiopia Achieve the Global Target of 90-90-90?

Though the pandemic was curved down throughout the world, HIV infection remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world, sub-Saharan Africa has been affected more. In 2015, 76% of the total HIV-infected people and 75% of the total HIV/AIDS deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa (1).

Since the reporting of the first AIDS case in 1986, HIV/AIDS became an epidemic in a short period of time (2). Ethiopia, as one of the heavily affected countries, invested a lot since the 1990s on prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Ethiopia adopted the global 90-90-90 target which is part of the strategies designed to eliminate HIV/AIDS epidemics by 2030. This target aims 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status, 90% of those diagnosed with HIV infection will receive sustained combination antiretroviral therapy (ART), and 90% of all people receiving ART will be virally suppressed by 2020. Achievement this target is highly dependent on the trend of HIV infection in the previous years, the burden of the disease, commitment and capacity of the leaders and implementation of the designed strategies to achieve the target (3).

As a result, the national prevalence of HIV infection among those aged 15–49 years went down to 0.9 though there is heterogeneity by sex, geography and population groups- remaining high among women and urban areas (4). Similarly, though not uniform significant progress has been made towards achieving the 90-90-90 global targets by 2020 which is evidenced by a recent population-based HIV impact assessment survey where 72% of HIV-positive people aged 15–64 in urban areas were aware of their HIV status, 99% of those aware of their HIV-positive status reported current use of ART, and 90% of those reporting current use of ART were virally suppressed (5). Therefore, concerted effort must continue to address the heterogeneous distribution of HIV infection and achieve the global targets uniformly within the remaining short period of time.

The current issue of the journal, the third regular issue for the year 2019, contains an editorial, twelve original articles and three case reports focusing on various topics. Two of the articles in this issue deal with HIV/AIDS.

I invite readers to read through these articles and appreciate or utilize the contents. I also urge readers to forward comments and suggestions to the editor or the corresponding authors.