At a Tuesday night World AIDS Day event, Vice President Joe Biden celebrated the White House’s newly announced goal of wiping out the disease by 2030 by expanding government programs.
The soiree was titled “It Always Seems Impossible Until It Is Done” to highlight just how close leaders believe the U.S. is to saving the world’s 37 million HIV-diagnosed population. Over the past five years, the percentage of people living with HIV who were diagnosed increased from 81 percent to 87, according to the White House.
“We have the capacity to change the desperate circumstances endured by millions of people around the world and to change those circumstances in real time — not down the road, not a long time from now,” Biden told attendees following Miley Cyrus and Bono’s performances at the Carnegie Hall event in New York.
Earlier Tuesday, the White House released the Federal Action Plan for 2016 to 2020, which includes specific steps the federal government will take over the next five years, as well as 170 additional actions that will be assigned to other agencies.
Secretary of State John Kerry also shared support for the strategy in a statement put out by his office earlier Tuesday, “Today, encouraged by the progress we have made and determined to keep up the fight, we reaffirm our commitment to achieving an AIDS-free generation, and to ending the AIDS epidemic once and for all by 2030.”
On Dec. 6, the Office of National AIDS Policy will release a list of new actions that states will be expected to take in the federal-state partnership against the disease.
