As one of the Maltese Presidency of the European Union of the Council initiatives, a technical meeting brought together leading experts on HIV prevention and control from across the EU to discuss how Europe could improve its response to HIV and achieve the targets outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals, the actions agreed at the UN High-Level meeting on HIV/AIDS and those adopted in the Global Health Sector Strategy at the World Health Assembly.

One in 2 people living with HIV are diagnosed late in the course of their infection. So late, that two out of three people with AIDS in the EU/EEA receive their diagnosis within only three months of discovering they had HIV. For World AIDS Day 2017, ECDC highlighted the problem of late diagnosis and the need for diversifying HIV testing approaches.