Why everyone is not able to access full range of HIV combination prevention options?
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The reality is a mix of YES and NO. While the facts and figures shared in the latest report by UNAIDS reveal that as a world we are NOT already on the path, they do show that we CAN be there if world leaders take bold actions ensuring that the HIV response has the resources it needs and that the human rights of everyone are protected.
Progress made in the past decade notwithstanding, there still is a huge gap between the targets set up to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 and what has actually been achieved. The UNAIDS report - The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads- shows that while the end of AIDS is within our grasp, currently the world is off track. Globally, of the 39.9 million people living with HIV, nearly 25% (9.3 million), are not receiving life-saving treatment, including 660,000 children living with HIV.
Then again with 630,000 people succumbing to AIDS-related illness in 2022, we are off-track to meet the target of reducing AIDS-related deaths to below 250,000 by 2025. Women and girls are still disproportionately affected, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Globally, 4,000 young women and girls became infected with HIV every week in 2022.
World leaders had pledged to reduce annual new infections to below 370,000 by 2025, but new HIV infections are still more than three times higher than that, at 1.3 million in 2023. New HIV infections are rising in three regions- the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and central Asia and Latin America. Nearly 25% of the new HIV infections were in Asia and the Pacific. These worrisome trends are mainly due to a lack of HIV prevention services for marginalised and key populations and the barriers posed by punitive laws and social discrimination.
HIV prevention and treatment services will only reach people if human rights are upheld, if unfair laws against women and against marginalised communities are scrapped, and if discrimination and violence are tackled head on.
We have to put people living with HIV and communities at risk at the centre of our responses to end AIDS. Keeping this in mind, the UNAIDS 2025 targets include that less than 10% of people living with HIV and key populations experience stigma and discrimination; less than 10% of people living with HIV, women and girls and key populations experience gender based inequalities and gender based violence; and less than 10% countries have punitive laws and policies.
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