Aids deaths drop by a third
FIGHT STALLS: POLITICAL WILL, FUNDS SHORT OF WHAT’S NEEDED TO KEEP MOMENTUM UP
37.9m live with HIV, but record 23.3m of those have access to antiretrovirals.
HIV-related deaths last year fell to about 770 000 – 33% lower than in 2010 – the United Nations said yesterday, but warned that global efforts to eradicate the disease were stalling as funding dries up.
An estimated 37.9 million people now live with human immunodeficiency virus – a record 23.3 million of those have access to some antiretroviral therapy, UNAids said in its annual report.
Highlighting the enormous progress made since the height of the Aids epidemic in the mid1990s, the report showed that the number people dying from the disease fell from 800 000 in 2017 to 770 000 last year.
The figure was down by more than a third from 2010, when
there were 1.2 million Aidsrelated deaths. But it also exposed weaknesses in the world’s fight against Aids.
While Aids-related deaths in Africa, the continent most affected by the epidemic, have plummeted this decade, Eastern Europe has seen the death toll rise 5% and the Middle East and North Africa 9%.
Year-on-year, those same regions saw a 29% and 10% rise in new infections, respectively.
“We urgently need increased political leadership to end Aids,” said Gunilla Carlsson, UNAids executive director.
“Ending Aids is possible if we focus on people not diseases ... and take a human rights-based approach to reaching people most affected by HIV.”
Decades of research have yet to yield a cure or vaccine for the virus, which has infected almost 80 million people and killed more than 35 million since the early 1980s.
The UN said that more than half of new HIV infections globally come from “key populations” – intravenous drug users, gay men, transgender people, sex workers and prisoners. Despite this, the report said under 50% of these atrisk populations were reached by HIV prevention services in more than half of countries.
Another vulnerable group is children, with more than 160 000 new HIV infections last year, and young women are 60% more likely to get HIV than young men of the same age. –