The United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) report has recently been released.
What are the highlights of the report?
The report titled, “Ending AIDS: Progress towards the 90–90–90 target”, is the annual scorecard for progress.
Globally AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since 2005.
The 2015 target of 15 million people on treatment has been met.
Efforts to double the target to 30 million by 2020 are on right track.
As of last year, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million HIV+ patients had access to treatment.
Nearly 95 per cent of the cases in 2016 were concentrated in just 10 countries. India is one of them.
India has 2.1 million people living with HIV, with 80,000 new infections annually, as of 2016.
India is the country where most new HIV infections are occurring in the Asia-Pacific region.
The emergence of HIV in some locations that were earlier considered ‘not high-burden’ area is a cause for concern.
There is an insufficient availability and poor affordability of essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries.
Actions focused on the intersections between intellectual property rights, innovation, and public health are vitally important for resolving market failures in medicine development and manufacture.
The global AIDS response continues its reliance on the Indian industry.
India supplied nearly 90% of antiretroviral medicines in low- and middle-income countries in 2015.
Experts maintain that since 2010, the decline in new infections has only been 16%.
Going by this trend, the global target of reducing the figure to 500,000 a year by 2020 seems unattainable.
Quick Facts
90-90-90 target
The idea behind the 90-90-90 target is to diagnose 90% of people who are HIV positive; get 90% of the diagnosed HIV+ people on antiretroviral treatment, and 90% of those on antiretroviral should be virally suppressed.
This is attained when an HIV+ patient’s viral load reaches an undetectable level, curbing transmission.
UNAIDS
TheUnited Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
UNAIDS is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
It is a member of the United Nations Development Group.
