New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, made a passionate call on Tuesday morning for the “final push” to end HIV and Aids as he marked World Aids Day in the city that has endured more than three decades as the “epicenter of the disease”.

Cuomo said that New York state was still determined to wipe out Aids by 2020, and would assist the rest of the nation to meet the same goal. He told a boisterous gathering at the legendary Apollo Theater, in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, the state would “take our knowhow and great medications to the countries around the world that are still suffering”.

The governor honored the approximately 153,000 New Yorkers who have died from Aids-related causes since the disease took hold in the early 1980s, and said the state was determined to make HIV and Aids a “thing of the past”.

“We were the first state in the US to give a target date to end the epidemic by 2020. Now everyone needs to put their efforts into this final push,” he said.

Cuomo announced a state plan in 2014 called End the Epidemic, aimed at cutting new cases of HIV infection in New York State down to minimal levels by 2020 and eliminating it as a public health threat.

On Monday night he announced a commitment to seek new funding of $200m from the state legislature in 2016, to add to the state’s $2.5bn annual spending on HIV and Aids-related housing and healthcare services, to help achieve this goal.

“When we began this fight more than 25 years ago, Aids was not a medical crisis as much as a social crisis, one that fanned the flames of bigotry,” he said, reminding the audience that President Ronald Reagan had refused to acknowledge the disease for three years in the 1980s – drawing boos from the crowd.

Meanwhile, the White House issued a statement renewing its commitment to federal efforts to curb the disease, while expressing enduring concern.

“Globally, although prevention, treatment, and care have significantly improved, nearly 37 million people are living with HIV, including 1.2 million in the United States, and too many have not been diagnosed, are not in medical care, and are not virally suppressed,” the statement said.

It added that, despite scientific advances in treatment and effective prevention options, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drugs that are effective in blocking infection with HIV, “too many lack access to life-saving and life-enhancing services”.

Obama, who is in Paris for the climate talks, has also set 2020 as the target date for the US to “become a place where new HIV infections are rare and, when they do occur, every person … will have unfettered access to high-quality, life-extending care, free from stigma and discrimination”, according to Tuesday’s statement.

At the 2015 United Nations general assembly sustainable development Summit, the US pledged with global partners to end the epidemic of Aids by 2030.

At the New York event to mark World Aids Day on Tuesday, Cuomo said: “We are the progressive capital of the nation. We celebrate our community and our diversity and our differences and we fiercely defend our individual rights as New Yorkers,” he said.

Cuomo said New York was proud to defend an individual’s right to love and live without bigotry.

“We are not going to tolerate discrimination against anyone,” the governor said.

New York state health officials and experts are focused on cutting the rate of new infections to a minimal level.

The annual rate of new infections in the state – with 80% of those cases occurring in New York City – has fluctuated between 3,000 and 3,600 a year since 2010. The state department of health wants to reduce that to a maximum of 750 new cases annually by 2020, at which point HIV would cease to be regarded as a major public health threat.

There is also a push by health officials to get those who are HIV-positive on the latest medications, which can suppress the virus to the point where it is not detectable and the individuals can lead long, healthy lives.

“Aids is no longer a death sentence. That’s something to celebrate; it’s a hard-fought victory,” said Anthony Hayes, a spokesman for the New York-based health, education and HIV-testing center, Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Around 670,000 deaths have occurred in the US from Aids-related causes since the first cases were reported in America in the summer of 1981, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control through 2013.

“New York was once the epicenter of the Aids crisis – but now we are showing the nation how to fight back and made this epidemic a thing of the past,” Cuomo said.

Hayes said that areas of concern in the battle against HIV infection remained the younger population, between the ages of 13 and 24, for whom HIV infections are continuing to rise, and Latino and African American New Yorkers, where issues often arise because of lack of access healthcare and a reluctance to seek medical help, said Hayes.

“Stigma and shame remain an issue even in 2015. Look, it took Charlie Sheen a number of years and millions of dollars spent over keeping secret that he was HIV-positive,” said Hayes, referring to the recent revelation by the actor.

GMHC is also concerned that in many segments of the population at risk of HIV infection, condom use is falling.

Cases of syphilis have been on the rise in the US since 2000, with men who have unprotected sex with men especially susceptible, according to the CDC.

The syphilis infection rate nationally is 6.4 cases per 100,000. In New York State the rate is 15.5 cases, rising to between 86 and 171 per 100,000 in Manhattan hot spots, according to the New York state department of health.