By Satyabrat Borah
World AIDS Day, observed every year on December 1, stands as one of the most recognized global health days, a moment when millions of people pause to remember those lost to HIV-related illnesses, celebrate the extraordinary progress made in treatment and prevention, and renew their commitment to ending the epidemic that has shadowed humanity for more than four decades. The day began in 1988, when ministers of health from around the globe gathered in London and agreed on the world needed a unified occasion to raise awareness, fight stigma, and mobilize resources against a virus that had already begun to reveal its devastating potential. Since then, each December 1 has carried a specific theme, yet the underlying message remains constant: solidarity, science, and human rights are the only paths toward an AIDS-free future.
The story of HIV and AIDS is inseparable from stories of fear, loss, courage, and redemption. When the first cases of what would later be called AIDS were reported in 1981 among gay men in Los Angeles and New York, few could have imagined the scale of the crisis to come. Pneumocystis pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma, rare conditions until then, suddenly appeared in young, previously healthy individuals whose immune systems seemed to have collapsed overnight. Newspapers spoke of a “gay cancer” or “gay plague,” and panic spread faster than understanding. By the time scientists identified the human immunodeficiency virus as the cause in 1983 and 1984, the epidemic had already taken root on every continent.
In those early years, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence delivered with chilling certainty. Combination antiretroviral therapy did not exist, and the few drugs available, such as AZT introduced in 1987, offered only modest benefit at the cost of severe side effects. Funerals became a grim routine in affected communities. Artists, activists, writers, and ordinary citizens watched friends and lovers waste away, often abandoned by hospitals afraid to touch them and ostracized by families ashamed or terrified of contagion. The stigma was so profound that some bodies went unclaimed, and many death certificates falsely listed other causes to spare surviving relatives embarrassment.
Yet even in the darkest moments, something remarkable happened. People refused to accept silence as an answer. In San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, and cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, affected communities organized. Gay men, hemophiliacs, sex workers, and people who injected drugs formed the first advocacy groups, demanding research funding, compassionate care, and an end to discrimination. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP, pioneered a new style of confrontational activism with slogans like “Silence = Death” and daring protests that disrupted stock exchanges, pharmaceutical company headquarters, and even St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Their work forced governments and drug companies to accelerate clinical trials, lower prices, and involve patients in decision-making processes that had previously excluded them.
Women, too, reshaped the narrative. Initially portrayed as mere vectors of transmission to men and babies, women living with HIV insisted on being seen as people deserving treatment and dignity. Mothers in Uganda and Thailand marched for access to medicines that could prevent transmission to their children. In South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign, led by figures like Zackie Achmat, took the government to court and won the right to provide antiretroviral drugs in public health facilities, saving countless lives and setting legal precedents for health as a human right.
Science, pushed by activism and pulled by human desperation, delivered miracles no one dared hope for in the 1980s. The development of highly active antiretroviral therapy in 1996 transformed HIV from a fatal illness into a manageable chronic condition for those with access to medication. A person diagnosed today who starts treatment promptly and adheres to it can expect a near-normal lifespan. Drugs became simpler: from dozens of pills taken multiple times a day to, in many cases, a single daily tablet. Long-acting injectables and future possibilities like monthly or even annual dosing are already in late-stage trials. Perhaps most revolutionary has been the discovery that effective treatment reduces viral load to undetectable levels, making sexual transmission essentially impossible, a principle captured in the message “U=U” or Undetectable equals Untransmittable, now endorsed by every major health authority on earth.
Prevention has been revolutionized as well. Male and latex condoms remain indispensable, but the toolbox has grown. Medical male circumcision reduces risk for heterosexual men by about sixty percent. Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a daily pill or bimonthly injection, cuts HIV acquisition by more than ninety-nine percent when taken as prescribed. Post-exposure prophylaxis can prevent infection if started within seventy-two hours of exposure. And the dapivirine vaginal ring and forthcoming lenacapavir injections promise discreet, user-controlled options especially valuable for women in settings where negotiating condom use is difficult.
Mother-to-child transmission, once the most heartbreaking face of the epidemic, has become rare where services reach women. In 2000, fewer than fifty children in high-income countries acquired HIV from their mothers. By 2023, the number of new infections among children globally had fallen by seventy percent from its peak, and several countries, including Cuba, Thailand, and Belarus, have been certified as having eliminated mother-to-child transmission entirely. These victories did not happen by chance. They are the result of decades of investment in antenatal care, universal HIV testing for pregnant women, and provision of lifelong treatment to mothers and short-course prophylaxis to newborns.
Still, the epidemic is far from over. At the end of 2024, approximately thirty-nine million people were living with HIV, and roughly ten million of them, one in four, did not know their status or were not receiving treatment. Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America have seen rising new infections in recent years, often driven by punitive laws and inadequate harm-reduction services for people who use drugs. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women remain disproportionately affected, facing intersecting vulnerabilities of gender inequality, poverty, and violence. Stigma, though lessened, persists: people living with HIV still face discrimination in employment, healthcare, travel, and even within their own families.
Funding, after years of growth, has plateaued or declined in real terms. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, have saved an estimated twenty-five million lives since their creation, yet both face political headwinds and budget constraints. The search for a vaccine, the holy grail of HIV research, has yielded repeated disappointments, though recent trials using mRNA technology and broadly neutralizing antibodies have sparked cautious optimism. A cure remains elusive, but breakthroughs in gene editing and immune-based therapies suggest it may one day be possible to clear the virus from the body entirely or achieve sustained remission without daily medication.
World AIDS Day 2025 arrives at a moment of both triumph and urgency. The United Nations’ 95-95-95 targets, that ninety-five percent of people living with HIV know their status, ninety-five percent of those diagnosed receive treatment, and ninety-five percent of those treated achieve viral suppression, are within reach globally by 2030 if current efforts are sustained and expanded. Several countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Botswana, have already met or exceeded these goals. Yet the final stretch is always the hardest. The people still unreached often live in the most marginalized circumstances: remote rural areas, criminalized communities, conflict zones, or societies where homosexuality or drug use can lead to imprisonment or death.
This year’s theme, chosen by UNAIDS, emphasizes collective responsibility under the banner “Take the Rights Path.” It calls on governments to repeal laws that criminalize HIV transmission, exposure, or non-disclosure, as well as those that punish same-sex relationships, sex work, or drug possession. Evidence shows that such laws drive people away from testing and treatment, fueling underground epidemics. The theme also urges investment in community-led responses, because peers and local organizations consistently outperform top-down programs in reaching hidden populations with compassion and cultural understanding.
On December 1, cities will glow red: the Sydney Opera House, Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building, Table Mountain, and countless other landmarks bathed in crimson light as a reminder that HIV still touches every corner of the planet. Memorial quilts will be unfurled, candles lit, and names read aloud. Concerts, marches, free testing events, and school programs will bring generations together to learn from the past and commit to the future. In churches, mosques, temples, and community centers, faith leaders will preach love over fear. Scientists will present the latest data, activists will demand more, and young people, many born after the worst years of the crisis, will discover a history they must never repeat.
The red ribbon, simple loop of scarlet fabric introduced in 1991 by the Visual AIDS Artists Caucus, remains the most universal symbol of solidarity. Worn on lapels, tied around trees, printed on T-shirts, and projected onto screens, it whispers a promise: we will not look away. We will not forget the more than forty million lives already lost. We will not abandon the millions still living with the virus. And we will not rest until every person, everywhere, can live free from the threat of HIV.
That vision, once dismissed as utopian, now lies within reach. The tools exist. The knowledge exists. What remains needed is the political will, the funding, and the moral clarity to finish what earlier generations began in the face of unimaginable grief. World AIDS Day is not only a day of mourning or celebration. It is a day of reckoning and renewal, a day to measure how far we have come and how far we still must go, together, until the red ribbon can finally be retired and the story of AIDS becomes a chapter of history rather than a daily reality for millions. Until that day arrives, December 1 will keep calling us back, hearts open, fists raised, determined to turn solidarity into action and action into the end of an epidemic.
