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LONDON: Complacency begins to delay the fight against the global AIDS epidemic, the pace of progress does not correspond to what is needed, warned the United Nations on Wednesday.
The UN agency on HIV / AIDS UNAIDS said in an update report that the fight was at a "precarious stage" and while deaths were dwindling and the rates treatment increased, rates of new infections threatened to break the disease. "The world is sliding off the track, promises made to the most vulnerable people in society are not kept," says the report. "There are miles to go to end the AIDS epidemic."
Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, noted in the foreword to the report that great strides had been made to reduce the number of AIDS-related deaths and to ensure that a record number of people were receiving antiretroviral treatment. "The report states that about 21.7 million of the 37 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were on treatment in 2017, five and a half times more than ten years ago.
This rapid and sustained increase The people cared for contributed to a 34% decrease in AIDS-related deaths from 2010 to 2017. AIDS deaths in 2017 were the lowest in this century, with less than one million people, according to the report, but Sidibe also said that There were now points of "crisis" in the prevention of propagati HIV – especially among vulnerable and high-risk populations – and in obtaining sustained funding
"The success of saving lives has not been reducing new HIV infections", did he declare. "New HIV infections are not shrinking fast enough HIV prevention services are not provided on an adequate scale … and do not reach the people who need them most."
" FINANCIAL CRISIS "
Sidibe said that the failure of new infections in children worry. "I am saddened by the fact that in 2017, 180,000 children were infected with HIV, far from the goal of eliminating new HIV infections in children in 2018." [19659002] The data from the report show that between adults and children, about 1.8 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2017. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, more than 77 million people have been infected with HIV. Nearly half of them – 35.4 million – have died of AIDS.
Linda-Gail Bekker, president of the International AIDS Society, said that the UNAIDS report showed that the main obstacles to the epidemic were ideological and political. 19659002] "AIDS is far from over," she said. "We can not congratulate ourselves on global progress until this progress is shared by all."
The report revealed that by the end of 2017, $ 21.3 billion was available for the AIDS response in low- and middle-income countries. More than half came from domestic sources of funding rather than international donors. UNAIDS estimates that $ 26.2 billion will be needed to fund the fight against AIDS by 2020. "There is a funding crisis," said Sidibe. While global AIDS resources increased in 2017, there was still a 20% gap between what is needed and what is available.
Such a deficit will be "catastrophic" for countries that rely on international aid to fight AIDS. 19659014]
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