Posted on January 28, 2012

Anti-AIDS Initiatives Launched to Eradicate New HIV Infections in Children

Two initiatives to end new HIV infections among children by the end of 2015 have been announced at the annual conference of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which comes to a close on Sunday.

The initiatives, the Business Leadership Council for a Generation Born HIV-Free and the Social Media Syndicate, are designed to reach billions of people and encourage them to join in efforts to reduce the number of HIV-infected births globally from 390,000 a year to zero within forty-eight months.

To that end, the initiatives will work closely with UNAIDS and other members of the Global Steering Group, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Led by former Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg, the Social Media Syndicate will expand on a model that was used to help raise $200 million to fight malaria by coordinating the efforts of influential individual publishers in a mass social mobilization campaign.

"The private sector is playing a key role in improving health and well-being around the world through its strong engagement in the Every Woman Every Child movement," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "Innovative partnerships are critical to meeting our goal of eliminating new HIV infections among children by the end of 2015."