World AIDS Day falls on December 1. The world has made significant advances in treatment and prevention since its discovery in 1984.
Now some 15.8 million people are now on HIV therapies and a five-year strategy to end the threat of a never-ending AIDS pandemic is starting to show results, according to the United Nations.
Estimates show new HIV infections have fallen by 35 percent since the peak of the three-decade-old pandemic in 2000, and AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 42 percent since a peak in 2004, UNAIDS said in a report timed for release before World Aids Day.
In addition to treatment, the UN initiatives and robust involvement from non-profit sector have also focused quality of life improvements for the afflicted.
“My life wasn’t good before this,” said Zoditu Azen, an Ethiopian HIV patient who now works in a women’s jewelry shop financed by the Christian charity Beza International Ministries.
“I used to earn money by carrying wood in the mountain. It was a difficult life because of my HIV status but since I joined here I am comfortable, it’s a much better life that I am leading,” she said in an interview released by the United Nations.
Even before the agency set out its strategy last year, the roughly 16 million people being treated by June 2015 was double the number in 2010. Barely 2.2 million were being treated 10 years ago.
“We have millions of people who have been left behind,” said the executive director of the UNAIDS program, Michel Sidibe. “We still have 22 million without treatment and their life is hanging in the balance. The job is not done, the job is not finished. It is unfinished business. If we stop, if we don’t continue to work, unfortunately we will have a rebound in this epidemic. We have been moving from despair to hope. Let us end this epidemic by 2030.”
By the end of 2014, 36.9 million people were infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and more than half of them do not have access to treatment.
Prevention has also been an obstacle in communities where education of the disease is not readily available, as well as for gay and transgender persons.
“Transgender people are particularly at risk to HIV because first and foremost is the lack of opportunity, they are pushed into begging, into sex work,” says Simran Sheikh, a transgender AIDS activist in India.
“I mostly motivate my community members, my friends, my peers to come and avail the free treatment which is available in the government hospitals,” he said in another interview released by the United Nations for World AIDS Day.
The World Health Organization says all people diagnosed as HIV positive should have immediate access to antiretroviral AIDS drugs, which hold the virus in check and give patients a good chance of a long and relatively healthy life.
The report identified 35 countries that account for 90 percent of all new HIV infections. Focusing on them would have the greatest impact and reap huge benefits, it said. (Reuters)