UNAIDS presented a new report on the global HIV situation
On July 18, a new report of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS) was presented in Paris on the assessment of the HIV situation in the world. According to the organization, the undoubted successes achieved by the world community towards the elimination of HIV / AIDS are nevertheless insufficient to achieve the global goals set by UNAIDS.
Based on the data published on the organization's website, it follows that at the moment the number of deaths caused by HIV has decreased noticeably in the world. This became possible due to the expansion of free access to ARVT.
According to UNAIDS, up to 75% of people living with HIV already know that they have a virus, and this, the organization believes, is a huge step forward in achieving the goal of treatment coverage. In 2016, the therapy was about 19.4 million people. During the year this figure grew by 12% (2.3 million). Today, more than 21.7 million people worldwide are being treated for HIV. Experts believe that by 2020 the number of HIV-positive people receiving ARVT should increase by another 8.4 million. However, given the lack of human and financial resources, as well as the strongest stigma, this task will be difficult to achieve.
An extremely complex situation with HIV infection is observed in several dozen countries around the world. Here the number of new cases continues to grow. At the same time, the overall decrease in the number of new HIV + cases in the world over the past 7 years was less than 20%. This, experts say, is clearly not enough to achieve by 2020 a global goal to reduce the growth rate to less than 500 thousand cases per year.
Against the backdrop of progress in the fight against HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa, where the number of new HIV + declined by almost one-third in seven years, the epidemic continues to gain momentum in the Eastern European and Central Asian region (EECA). Here the number of new HIV cases has doubled over the past year. The Middle East and North Africa also show restrained growth.
In total today there are almost 37 million people living with HIV in the world, just under 5% of them are children. Every day, up to 5,000 new infections are registered in the world, two thirds of them in tropical Africa.
The authors of the report point out that one of the key problems that need to be addressed urgently is insufficient HIV prevention. Often, programs do not reach groups at risk due to discrimination and stigma, which in turn are also extremely urgent and still far from solving the problem.
An equally important task for countries with a high proportion of affliction is the inadequate funding and insignificant attention to the problems of HIV-positive people.
In the part of the report on a group of countries from the EECA region, it is noted that here "the HIV epidemic continues to grow rapidly". Thus, according to UNAIDS, last year in the territory of the countries of the former USSR there were almost 1.5 million people living with HIV, of which almost three quarters were aware of their status. A year earlier, less than 70% of PLHIV owned this information.
Access to ARVT in 2017 in EECA countries were about 520 thousand people, or about 36% of people living with HIV. Undefined viral load was established only in 26% of PLHIV.
At the same time, the report emphasizes that Russia, where 70% of HIV-positive people in the EECA region live, has a decisive influence on the "regional trend".
The main reasons for the difficult situation with HIV in the Russian Federation, despite the great success with some of the reduction in prices for ARV drugs, experts believe the lack of the necessary programs of substitution maintenance therapy and HIV prevention among drug users.
"Halfway to the goals of 2020, we must confirm that we want to achieve them. Advances in the field of treatment have already shown what can be achieved. But there is still a long way to go, "said UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé.