Sweden is the first country to report meeting the UN’s ambitious 90-90-90 targets. It should not be surprising that a high-income country in northern Europe is first do so given the context of the 90-90-90 targets. Sweden’s success highlights on-going challenges to the strategy that leave low and middle income countries on their own in terms of funding and implementation. For example, the Swedish National AIDS Program includes mandatory linkage to care upon HIV diagnosis, free access to ART, and high adherence to national guidelines by medical care providers within the health system, factors that are certainly not universal in most national AIDS programs globally.
While this milestone is certainly cause for celebration for those fighting the epidemic in Sweden, civil society activists and specialists must continue to point out that the conditions in Sweden do not reflect the conditions found in most middle and income countries, especially those hardest hit by the epidemic in the Global South. Unless more aggressive action is taken by local and international bodies to address these contextual disparities such as funding or implementation of measurement goals, the 90-90-90 strategy will only continue to garnish results in high-income countries of the Global North.
Read more here