‘World is slipping off track on Aids’

UN: CONCERNED COMPLACENCY IS CREEPING IN

Data shows that 180 000 children became infected with HIV last year.

London

Complacency is starting to stall the fight against the global Aids epidemic, with the pace of progress not matching what is needed, the United Nations (UN) warned yesterday.

The UN HIV/Aids body, UNAids, said in an update report the fight was at a “precarious point” and while deaths were falling and treatment rates rising, rates of new HIV infections threatened to derail efforts to defeat the disease.

“The world is slipping off track. The promises made to society’s most vulnerable individuals are not being kept,” the report said. “There are miles to go in the journey to end the Aids epidemic.”

Michel Sidibe, UNAids director, noted in the report’s foreword that there had been great progress in reducing deaths from Aids and in getting a record number of people worldwide into treatment with antiretroviral drugs.

The report said an estimated 21.7 million of the 37 million people who have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes Aids were on treatment last year, five-and-a-half times more than a decade ago.

This rapid and sustained increase in people getting treatment helped drive a 34% drop in Aids-related deaths from 2010 to 2017. Aids deaths in 2017 were the lowest this century, at fewer than a million people, the report said.

But Sidibe also pointed to what he said were “crisis” situations in preventing the spread of HIV, and in securing sustained funding.

“The success in saving lives has not been matched with equal success in reducing new HIV infections,” he said. “New HIV infections are not falling fast enough. HIV prevention services are not being provided on an adequate scale ... and are not reaching the people who need them the most.”

Sidibe said a failure to halt new infections among children was a big worry. “I am distressed by the fact that in 2017, 180 000 children became infected with HIV, far from the 2018 target of eliminating new HIV infections among children.”

Data in the report showed that overall among adults and children worldwide, about 1.8 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2017. Since the start of the Aids epidemic in the 1980s, more than 77 million people have become infected with HIV. Almost half of them – 35.4 million – have died of Aids.

The report said that at the end of last year, $21.3 billion (R285 billion) was available for the Aids response in low- and middle-income countries. More than half of that came from domestic funding sources rather than international donors. –