World needs to fight further against AIDS: UN report

World needs to fight further against AIDS: UN report

A United Nations report released on Wednesday says that the world has made “extraordinary” achievements in the past year at combating HIV, but that greater efforts are still needed to end the global epidemic.

The report, led by the World Health Organization, found that the number of new HIV infections has dropped by 15 per cent in the past decade. It also reported a 22 per cent decrease in AIDS-related deaths over the past five years.

The report said that financial cutbacks by Governments and Aid groups has led to a drop of nearly $1 billion in domestic and international HIV funding in 2010.

The UN estimates that 34 million people around the world are living with HIV.

“It has taken the world 10 years to achieve this level of momentum,” said Gottfried Hirnschall, Director of WHO’s HIV Department. “There is now a very real possibility of getting ahead of the epidemic. But this can only be achieved by both sustaining and accelerating this momentum over the next decade and beyond.”

Advances in HIV science and programme innovations over the past year add hope for future progress. It will be essential to rapidly apply new science, technologies and approaches to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of HIV programmes in countries.

“2011 has been a game changing year. With new science, unprecedented political leadership and continued progress in the AIDS response, countries have a window of opportunity to seize this momentum and take their responses to the next level,” said Paul De Lay, Deputy Executive Director, Programme, UNAIDS.

India, which has one of the highest populations of HIV-infected people in Asia, has witnessed a decline in new infections by a significant 56 per cent from the epidemic’s peak in 1996, with other Asian countries also showing a plunge, according to an UNAIDS report.

The number of people dying of AIDS-related causes fell to 1.8 million in 2010, down from a peak of 2.2 million in the mid-2000s, while a total of 2.5 million deaths have been averted in low- and middle-income countries since 1995 due to antiretroviral therapy being introduced.