2024-07-24 16:49:21
World AIDS Conference
Defeating AIDS by 2030: Is the goal still achievable?
Updated on 22.07.2024Reading time: 3 min.
The UN has made great progress in the fight against AIDS. Nevertheless, one person worldwide still dies every minute from the effects of the disease. An overview.
Despite great successes in the fight against AIDS, the United Nations (UN) is still far from its goal of largely eradicating the immune deficiency disease by 2030. “The path to ending AIDS is a political and financial decision,” emphasized the UN program to combat AIDS, UNAIDS, when publishing its new report.
If those responsible now increase the resources and, among other things, protect the rights of particularly affected groups, the goal can still be achieved.
The two terms are often used synonymously. But they describe different things. HIV (“Human Immunodeficiency Virus”) is the name given to the virus that damages certain cells of the immune system and makes the body more susceptible to disease. If left untreated, an infection with the HIV virus can lead to AIDS. AIDS stands for “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome”.
Financial cuts, discrimination and increasing curtailment of human rights are jeopardising previous progress, warned UNAIDS at the start of the World AIDS Conference in München.
According to data from the new UNAIDS report, around 1.3 million people were newly infected with the virus last year. The interim goal was to reduce the number of new infections per year to less than 370,000 by 2025 – in 2023 the number would still be 3.5 times higher.
The number of deaths, at 630,000, was only half as high as in 2010. However, one person worldwide continues to die every minute from the effects of AIDS. The world is not on track to achieve the interim goal for 2025 of reducing AIDS-related deaths to under 250,000.
Even though the number of people receiving antiviral treatment has increased, almost one in four people affected still does not have access to life-saving medication – which also prevents the virus from spreading further. Children are particularly disadvantaged: 77 percent of those infected aged 15 and over have access, while only 57 percent of children up to 14 years have access.
The UN aims to reduce new infections and AIDS-related deaths by over 90 percent between 2010 and 2030. According to UNAIDS, the decisions made by heads of state and government this year will determine whether this goal is achieved and whether AIDS will no longer be considered a threat to public health by 2030.
“Heads of state and government can save millions of lives, prevent millions of new HIV infections and ensure that all people living with HIV can live healthy, fulfilling lives,” warned Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. It is important to have sufficient resources to fight HIV and to protect everyone’s human rights.
According to the report, if world leaders take the necessary and decisive action now, the number of people living with HIV who require lifelong treatment could stabilize at around 29 million by 2050. The cost of not tackling AIDS properly will be significantly higher. If the right decisions are not made, the study says the number of people requiring lifelong support will rise to 46 million, up from 39.9 million in 2023.
According to UNAIDS, new HIV infections have fallen by 39 percent worldwide since 2010, and by as much as 59 percent in eastern and southern Africa. However, the number of new HIV infections has increased in some regions of the world: Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa are affected, but above all in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In the latter, the fight against HIV appears to have gotten dangerously off track due to political and financial challenges. It is the only region in the world where the death rate is also increasing.
In addition, stigmatization and discrimination against sex workers, men who have sex with men, and intravenous drug users, for example, make it difficult to access prevention and treatment. According to the new report, people in these groups and their sexual partners make up a higher proportion of new infections worldwide than in 2010 (45 percent), and this will rise to 55 percent by 2022. Prevention and treatment options will only reach people if human rights are upheld.