《Slowly, HIV is being beaten》

On the principle that no news is good news, the fact that AIDS has dropped out of the headlines is surely a good thing. Nevertheless, it does no harm for the world to be reminded from time to time that the illness has not gone away. To that end, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization promote December 1st as World AIDS Day.

This year is the last before the target date for the success of the latest of the agencies' campaigns to roll out the antiretroviral drugs. This particular campaign is called 90-90-90. Its aims are that, by 2020, 90% of all those around the world who are infected will know they are infected; 90% of that group will be receiving sustained antiretroviral therapy; and 90% of those receiving therapy will have had the virus effectively suppressed.

As the chart shows, doing this by 2020 is unlikely. Whether that is seen as a failure, though, depends on your point of view. Had the target been reached easily it would surely have been criticized as unambitious.*

Regardless of when 90-90-90 is achieved the next aim, 95-95-95, is already pencilled in for 2030. The exact meaning of that phrase is unclear. But in principle eliminating HIV is possible with existing technology. The slogans for this are "zero new HIV infections", "zero AIDS-related deaths" and "zero discrimination".

However, there is no vaccine against HIV. If this state of affairs continues, eliminating the virus will mean giving drugs to all those infected until they have died of other causes. It will also mean someone paying for those drugs. Exterminating HIV, then, will be a huge undertaking and an expensive one. But not, with luck, an impossible one.

*这句话的结构

Had the target been reached easily 这部分其实是一个虚拟语气的条件状语从句，因为这个从句表达的是和事实情况相反的假设。在这个从句中，if 被省略，had 被提前，变成了倒装句。这个从句的正常语序是：If the target had been reached easily；后半句也是虚拟语气的时态：it would surely have been criticised as unambitious。

类似的例子还有：

Had you seen it (=If you had seen it), you would have believed.（如果你见过它的话，你就会相信了。）