In their foundation’s annual letter, Bill and Melinda Gates lay out a series of goals for the next 15 years, including forcing HIV to a tipping point. The goals fall under what the foundation calls “our big bet,” which is a wager that “the lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history. And their lives will improve faster than anyone else’s.”

The letter organizes the big bet in a series of four breakthroughs the foundation sees coming in the next 15 years:

  • Health: Child deaths will go down, and more disease will be wiped out
  • Farming: Africa will be able to feed itself
  • Banking: Mobile banking will help the poor transform their lives
  • Education: Better software will revolutionize learning

Under the topic of health breakthroughs, the letter includes the goal of forcing HIV to a tipping point:

As we make progress toward a vaccine or a cure, the number of people beginning treatment in sub-Saharan Africa will finally outstrip the number of people newly infected. When we reach that point in the region with the most dense HIV transmission in the world, cases will start going down everywhere around the globe for the first time since the disease was discovered more than 30 years ago.