More Than Half Of People With HIV Now Have Access To Treatment, UNAIDS Says

For the first time, more than half of people in the world living with HIV have access to treatment, UNAIDS said in a report released today in Geneva. In addition, AIDS-related deaths have been nearly cut in half since 2005, it said. As of 2016, nearly 20 million people were living with HIV.

The report is available here. The report highlights areas where gains have been made and where gaps continue, and points out that funding for addressing HIV/AIDS has been flat.

A portion of the UNAIDS press statement is reprinted below:

“UNAIDS has released a new report showing that for the first time the scales have tipped: more than half of all people living with HIV (53%) now have access to HIV treatment and AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since 2005. In 2016, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV had access to treatment, and AIDS-related deaths have fallen from 1.9 million in 2005 to 1 million in 2016. Provided that scale-up continues, this progress puts the world on track to reach the global target of 30 million people on treatment by 2020.

“We met the 2015 target of 15 million people on treatment and we are on track to double that number to 30 million and meet the 2020 target,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “We will continue to scale up to reach everyone in need and honour our commitment of leaving no one behind.”

The region showing the most progress is eastern and southern Africa, which has been most affected by HIV and which accounts for more than half of all people living with HIV. Since 2010, AIDS-related deaths have declined by 42%. New HIV infections have declined by 29%, including a 56% drop in new HIV infections among children over the same period, a remarkable achievement resulting from HIV treatment and prevention efforts that is putting eastern and southern Africa on track towards ending its AIDS epidemic.”

UNAIDS also said:

“The report, Ending AIDS: progress towards the 90–90–90 targets, gives a detailed analysis of progress and challenges towards achieving the 90–90–90 targets. The targets were launched in 2014 to accelerate progress so that, by 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV are accessing sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90% of all people accessing antiretroviral therapy are virally suppressed.

The report shows that in 2016 more than two thirds (70%) of people living with HIV now know their HIV status. Of the people who know their status, 77% were accessing treatment, and of the people accessing treatment, 82% were virally supressed, protecting their health and helping to prevent transmission of the virus.”

WHO Urges Action on HIV Drug Resistance

Separately, the World Health Organization today issued a report detailing rising resistance to HIV drugs in several countries.

A WHO press release states: “The WHO HIV drug resistance report 2017 shows that in 6 of the 11 countries surveyed in Africa, Asia and Latin America, over 10% of people starting antiretroviral therapy had a strain of HIV that was resistant to some of the most widely used HIV medicines. Once the threshold of 10% has been reached, WHO recommends those countries urgently review their HIV treatment programmes.”

The WHO HIV drug resistance report is available here.