HIV-related deaths last year fell to around 770,000 – about 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 (ART), 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. 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.”
