New York has set a goal to eliminate AIDS in the state by the year 2020. Communities throughout the state are coming together to work on ways to implement the plan. Public health organizations met in Rochester recently for one such meeting to come up with their regional plan. In the early 1990s there were around 15,000 new cases of the disease each year. That’s now down to around 3,000 cases a year. By 2020, the state wants that number at 750 people or less. Dr. William Valenti is the staff physician at Trillium Health, a health organization dedicated to AIDS prevention and treatment. Valenti explains the three-part state plan: “Get people tested; so they know their HIV status. Get them into care. Keep them there. Treat them. And the third piece is preventing HIV in negative people who are at risk. And that involves one pill a day now.” Charles King is the co-chairman of the New York State Ending the Epidemic Task Force. He says with work HIV/AIDS can go the way of polio. “Here in the
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