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Agence France-Presse

HIV-related deaths last year fell to around 770,000 – some 33 per cent lower than in 2010 – the United Nations said on Tuesday, but warned that global efforts to eradicate the disease were stalling as funding dries up.
An estimated 37.9 million people now live with HIV – a record 23.3 million of those have access to some antiretroviral therapy, UNAIDS said in its annual report.

Highlighting the enormous progress made since the height of the Aids epidemic in the mid-1990s, the report showed that the number people dying from the disease fell from 800,000 in 2017 to 770,000 last year.
The figure was down by more than a third from 2010, when there were 1.2 million Aids-related deaths.
But it also exposed weaknesses in the world’s fight against Aids.
How the emotional toll on HIV and Aids patients is largely overlooked
While Aids-related deaths in Africa, the continent most affected by the epidemic, have plummeted this decade, Eastern Europe has seen the death toll rise 5 per cent and the Middle East and North Africa 9 per cent.
Year on year, those same regions saw a 29 per cent and 10 per cent rise in new infections, respectively.
“We urgently need increased political leadership to end Aids,” said Gunilla Carlsson, UNAIDS executive director.
“Ending Aids is possible if we focus on people not diseases … and take a human rights-based approach to reaching people most affected by HIV.”
Hopes raised for Aids cure after all traces of HIV vanish from ‘London patient’
Decades of research have yet to yield a cure or vaccine for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which has infected almost 80 million people and killed more than 35 million since the early 1980s.
The UN said that more than half of new HIV infections globally come from “key populations” – intravenous drug users, gay men, transgender people, sex workers and prisoners.
Despite this, the report said that less than 50 per cent of these at-risk populations were reached by HIV prevention services in more than half of countries.
Another vulnerable group is children, with more than 160,000 new HIV infections last year.
That is 41 per cent lower than in 2010, but far off the mark countries set themselves of no more than 40,000 new cases worldwide each year by 2018.

There remains a pronounced disparity in new infection rates among young men and women, with young women 60 per cent more likely to pick up HIV than young men of the same age.
The report also warned that a lack of political will coupled with decreasing finance risked undermining the progress made so far.
Last year US$19 billion was made available for Aids response, more than $7 billion short of the estimated $26.2 billion needed by 2020.


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Disease

Globals Aids deaths down by a third since 2010, but eradication efforts stalling: UN

An experimental vaccine against the Aids virus pictured in 2016. No effective cure or vaccine has yet been found. Photo: AFP

(FILES) In this file photograph taken on November 29, 2013, Indian sand artist Sudersan Pattnaik gives the final touches to a sand sculpture on the eve of World AIDS Day, as a horseman rides by on Golden Sea Beach in Puri, some 65 kms east of Bhubaneswar. - HIV-related deaths last year fell to around 770,000 -- some 33 percent lower than in 2010 -- the United Nations said July 15, 2019, but warned that global efforts to eradicate the disease were stalling as funding dries up. An estimated 37.9 million people now live with HIV -- a record 23.3 million of those have access to some antiretroviral therapy (ART), UNAIDS said in its annual report. (Photo by ASIT KUMAR / AFP)

In this image taken on May 9, 2019, a Pakistani paramedic takes a blood sample from a baby for a HIV test at a state-run hospital in Rato Dero in the district of Larkana of the southern Sindh province. - Parents nervously watch over their children as they jostle in line to be tested for HIV in a village near Pakistan's Larkana amid a sudden outbreak among its young who have allegedly been infected by a doctor using a contaminated syringe. (Photo by RIZWAN TABASSUM / AFP) / TO GO WITH: Pakistan-health-HIV-children, SCENE by Ashraf KHAN

African swine fever virus is now ‘endemic’ in China’s Tibet and Xinjiang regions, making its eradication harder, UN says

Piglets are kept in pens at a pig farm in Langfang in Hebei province on Monday, April 1, 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

graphic for online Pig population (millions) China European Union United States Brazil Russia Canada Mexico South Korea Japan Ukraine Belarus 433.25 150.11 73.42 38.83 22.2 14.33 11.08 10.51 9.35 6.25 3.16 Source: Livestock and Poultry: Worldwide Market and Trade 2018 SCMP

End of Aids in sight? New medication prevents virus being transmitted

A student displays his hands painted with messages as he poses during an HIV/Aids awareness campaign to mark the International Aids Candlelight Memorial, in Chandigarh, India. Photo: Reuters

Andrew Chidgey, Chief executive of AIDS Concern demonstrate HIV rapid test at AIDS Concerns Centre,Jordan. It takes 20 minutes to get a result from an HIV rapid test. One stroke on the test paper shows a negative result, and two strokes show a positive. 30NOV17 SCMP / Dickson Lee

Deadly drug-resistant TB a ‘blinking red’ global threat

Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, during an interview with AFP in New Delhi. Photo: AFP

(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 5, 2019 US President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address, alongside Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. - US President Donald Trump's call for an all-hands-on-deck push to end the AIDS epidemic focuses on trouble areas and vulnerable populations, as progress against HIV has stalled, officials said February 6, 2019. Although no dollar figure has been announced yet, details began to emerge on Wednesday of the plan touted by Trump in his State of the Union address a night earlier. "My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years," Trump said. "Together, we will defeat AIDS in America and beyond." (Photo by Doug Mills / POOL / AFP)

News

World

Europe

Middle East

Africa

A funding shortfall and lack of political will risks undermining the progress that has been made so far, UNAIDS said in its annual report


A lack of political will coupled with decreasing finance risks undermining the progress that has been made so far, according to the United Nations.


United Nations

Human rights

Wellness

Globals Aids deaths down by a third since 2010, but eradication efforts stalling: UN

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}A funding shortfall and lack of political will risks undermining the progress that has been made so far, UNAIDS said in its annual report

A funding shortfall and lack of political will risks undermining the progress that has been made so far, UNAIDS said in its annual report