The sixth United Nations (UN) High-Level Meeting (HLM) on HIV/AIDS took place on 22 and 23 June 2026. It provided countries an opportunity to renew their commitment to end AIDS as a public health threat worldwide and resulted in a new political declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly, which will establish the direction of the global HIV response for the next five years.

HIV and hepatitis often disproportionately affect the same communities, with millions of people living with HIV around the world also living with chronic hepatitis B or C. To support ending both epidemics, the new UN political declaration on HIV/AIDS commits to integrate hepatitis programmes into HIV services and HIV-related health and community systems with primary healthcare, including by:

• Paragraph 66. Promoting services that integrate prevention, treatment and care of co-occurring conditions, including hepatitis, and improving access to quality, affordable primary healthcare, comprehensive care and support services.
• Paragraph 51b. Ensuring 95% of pregnant women living with HIV and their children receive maternal and newborn care that is integrated or linked to comprehensive HIV services, including for the prevention of HIV and hepatitis B and treatment of syphilis.
• Paragraph 69. Prioritising and urgently accelerating the elimination of vertical transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B, and end paediatric AIDS.
• Paragraph 84. Ensuring global accessibility, availability and affordability of quality-assured health technologies for HIV and related comorbidities, including hepatitis.
• Paragraph 56. Scaling up harm reduction in accordance with national legislation.
• Paragraph 59. Delivering integrated services that prevent HIV and comorbidities, including hepatitis, among adolescent girls and women.
• Paragraph 74. Ensuring that all people can access stigma- and discrimination-free services.

The new political declaration is a key advocacy tool to hold governments accountable to scale up and integrate hepatitis services into HIV programmes and to eliminate both diseases as public health threats. Following the UN HLM on HIV/AIDs, advocates can:

• Write to or meet with their country’s ministry of health to ask how they plan to implement the commitments of the political declaration.

• Partner with HIV, maternal and child health, and other civil society organisations to advocate with one voice for strengthening the integration of HIV and hepatitis services.

• Call on governments to go beyond the commitments of the political declaration as they scale up their response to HIV and hepatitis, to ensure that all people living with HIV and/or hepatitis has access to holistic, person-centred and stigma-free health care.

Ahead of the UN HLM on HIV/AIDS, WHA and partners released a statement in response to the draft political declaration. The statement welcomed the political declaration’s commitment to integrate hepatitis programmes into HIV services, but called for stronger pledges around triple elimination, harm reduction, and the impact of new innovations.