Dr Glory Alexander, who is the founder of ASHA Foundation in India and elected as Vice President of AIDS Society of India (ASI), is also a part of the AIDS 2022 organizing committee. She said that "over the years, we have been able to reduce the number of new HIV infections by about 37% since 2010, and decreased AIDS-related deaths by 66% since 2010 in India. That is huge achievement and was possible largely due to scale up of antiretroviral therapy."
However, "among the key populations, HIV seroprevalence continues to remain very high - between 1.5% to 6.25% (compared to general population where HIV incidence is around 0.21%). This needs to be reduced before we can even think of achieving #endAIDS targets. Along with scaling up HIV care services we also have to reduce inequities, failing which it will be very difficult to reach out to the targets of 100-100-100 by 2030" said Dr Glory Alexander to CNS (Citizen News Service).
Dr Glory's concern regarding high HIV rate among key populations is also echoed by the United Nations joint programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). According to the UNAIDS, the risk of acquiring HIV is 35 times higher among people who inject drugs than adults who do not inject drugs; 30 times higher for female sex workers than adult women; 28 times higher among gay men and other men who have sex with men than adult men; and 14 times higher for transgender women than adult women.
Dr Ishwar Gilada rightly pointed out that it is not 'Global North vs Global South', but a call for reimagining the fight to end AIDS based on principles of solidarity, equity, and social justice. While Global North currently leads on health innovations, it is no less vital to ensure that these scientific breakthroughs reach the most-in-need people globally without any delay (or without any barriers like cost).
Bobby Ramakant - CNS (Citizen News Service)
(Bobby Ramakant is a World Health Organization (WHO) Director General's WNTD Awardee 2008 and part of editorial of CNS (Citizen News Service). Follow him on Twitter @BobbyRamakant or visit www.bit.ly/BobbyRamakant)
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