For decades, AIDS has taken the lives of millions of people and infected millions more worldwide. The key to reducing the effect of AIDS, and even potentially curing it, involves treating patients as early as possible after being diagnosed with HIV, before the disease damages organs. San Francisco General Hospital developed the RAPID program for this purpose, with the goal of “Getting to Zero” the number of new infections and deaths.

Three African countries are successfully reducing the transmission of HIV through treatment and education, surpassing many developed countries in reducing cases. Although each is unique, the key lessons include using comprehensive, community-based approaches and strategies that involve collective action.

Among the challenges for HIV-positive inmates are lack of food that meets their dietary needs and susceptibility to tuberculosis. The support groups, part of an HIV prevention and care program active in all the nation’s prisons, mitigate those challenges and create awareness about HIV prevention and care.

Up until 2015, people living with HIV in the U.S. could not buy term life insurance, outside of a few small-value employer policies. Æqualis, a new company in partnership with Prudential Financial, began offering 10- and 15-year life insurance policies to individual consumers to help them and to reduce stigmas surrounding the disease.

Jhpiego, a US nonprofit, trains and funds local taxi drivers in Lesotho to educate their passengers about male circumcision which can be instrumental in preventing HIV.

After years of seeing evidence that needle exchange programs helped prevent the spread of HIV, Congress finally lifted its ban on federal funding for groups that provide the service.

Soon, AIDS in Africa will be doing more than killing millions every year. It will destroy what there is of Africa's economy and cause further instability and, perhaps, war. But a nondescript hospital in Brazil could serve as a model for treating AIDS in Africa and worldwide.

PrePex, a new nonsurgical circumcision tool, could revolutionize the prevention of H.I.V. and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Cheap and easy to assemble, the device has proven successful in several randomized trials.

There is nothing more difficult than changing entrenched cultural practices, especially those as shrouded in taboos as female genital cutting. A grassroots approach in Ethiopia, however, has nearly completely eradicated this practice in villages that use it.

San Francisco wants to be the first city in the world to reduce its number of new HIV infections and deaths to zero. The city is relying heavily on two initiatives: getting people with HIV into antiretroviral treatment much faster, and expanding use of the HIV prevention pill, Truvada.

For adolescent girls in Kenya, poverty increases the likelihood of sexual exploitation. The Safe and Smart Savings program at Zelyn Academy creates a “safe space," where girls can talk about two seemingly disparate — and often taboo — topics: smart savings and reproductive and sexual health, and help break the cycles of poverty and HIV/AIDS.