Decades into the epidemic, the numbers for AIDS are still awful. In a report published on July 22nd, UNAIDS, the United Nations agency tasked with dealing with the disease, says that 40m people around the world are now infected. There were 1.3m new HIV infections in 2023, and 630,000 HIV-related deaths. But those two numbers are down from 2.1m (a 39% fall) and 1.3m (a 52% fall) respectively in 2010. That year is the baseline for calculating the drop of 90% in annual new infections and HIV-related deaths which experts reckon would end AIDS as a public-health threat. The aspiration is to reach this target by 2030. On current trends that seems unlikely. But the numbers are, mostly, heading in the right direction.

This snapshot of the epidemic is the background against which the 25th International AIDS Conference opens in Munich. Though these gatherings are no longer the councils of war about how best to proceed that they were in the epidemic’s early days—for matters of grand strategy in the fight against HIV are now pretty-much settled—they are still an important forum for researchers, medics and activists from around the world to meet with each other and with the bigwigs. They are also an opportunity to remind politicians and voters in wealthy countries, where AIDS has pretty much dropped off the radar screen, that the fight continues in many of the world’s poorer parts, and that money is the sinews of wars against viral enemies, as much as human ones.