UNAIDS calls for urgent global action as progress against HIV falters
New York, US (PANA) - New UN data released on Wednesday showed that the decline in new HIV infections which can lead to full-blown AIDS has slowed.
Globally, the number of new infections dropped by only 3.6 per cent between 2020 and 2021, the smallest annual decline in new HIV infections since 2016, said UNAIDS.
The agency warned that progress in prevention and treatment has faltered worldwide, putting millions of lives at risk.
“In 2021, there were 1.5 million new HIV infections and 650,000 AIDS-related deaths. This translates to 4,000 new HIV infections every day,” said Mary Mahy, UNAIDS Director a.i. Data for Impact.
“That’s 4,000 people who will need to be tested, started on treatment, avoid infecting their partners, and stay on treatment for the rest of their lives. It also translates to 1,800 deaths every day due to AIDS, or one death every minute.”
“In Danger”, the name of the latest report by the Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS, coincides with the International AIDS Conference which began on Wednesday in Montreal.
It shows how new HIV infections are now rising where they had been falling, in places such as Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most populous region. In East and Southern Africa, rapid progress from previous years significantly slowed in 2021.
The report said despite effective HIV treatment and tools to prevent and detect infection, the pandemic has thrived during COVID-19, in mass displacement settings, and other global crises that have put a strain on resources and reshaped development financing decisions, to the detriment of HIV programmes.
“If current trends continue, we expect that, in 2025, we’ll have 1.2 million people newly infected with HIV in that year. Again, that’s three times more than the 2025 target of 370.000,” said Ms. Mahy.
According to the UNAIDS report, voluntary male circumcisions that can reduce infection in men by 60 per cent, have slowed in the past two years.
The UN agency also noticed a slowing in treatment roll-out over the same period. One of the most promising preventive interventions is pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as it eliminates the risk of contracting the virus after exposure.
The number of people accessing PrEP doubled between 2020 and 2021, from about 820,000 to 1.6 million, primarily in Southern Africa, according to the report. But it is still far from the target set by UNAIDS of 10 million people receiving PrEP by 2025, with cost pushing it out of reach of many, globally.
The report said marked inequalities within and between countries have also stalled progress in the HIV response, and the disease itself has further widened vulnerabilities.
With a new infection occurring every two minutes in 2021 among young women and teenage girls, it is a demographic that remains particularly exposed.
The gendered HIV impact, particularly in Africa, has become clearer than ever during COVID, with millions of girls out of school, spikes in teenage pregnancies and gender-based violence, disruption to key HIV treatment and prevention services.
In sub-Saharan Africa, teenage girls and young women are three times as likely to acquire HIV as boys and young men.
-0- PANA MA 28July2022
