As per a report titled ‘Ending AIDS: Progress towards the 90-90-90 targets’ by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, India, China and Pakistan are among the 10 countries that accounted for more than 95% of all new HIV infections in the Asia and the Pacific region in 2016.
Highlights of ‘Ending AIDS: Progress towards the 90-90-90 targets’:
The report gives a comprehensive analysis of the 2014 targets to accelerate progress so that by 2020, 90% of all HIV-infected people know their status, 90% of all HIV-diagnosed people are accessing antiretroviral therapy (ART) and 90% of those taking ART are virally suppressed.
- As per the report, positive developments have been observed for the first time in the fight against AIDS as more than half of all people living with the HIV virus now have access to treatment, while AIDS-related deaths have nearly halved since 2005.
- The report added that last year, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV globally had access to treatment.
- The annual number of new HIV infections in Asia and the Pacific has declined from 310,000 in 2010 to 270,000 in 2016, marking a 13% drop.
- However, the report has identified India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia as top 10 countries which together accounted for more than 95% of all new HIV infections in the region in 2016.
- In India, a respondent-driven sampling survey across 26 cities found that knowledge of HIV status was 41% among people living with HIV who inject drugs. Of those who knew their HIV status, only 52 per cent were accessing antiretroviral therapy and 83 per cent of those accessing treatment were virally suppressed.
- The report also shows that globally, 30% of people living with HIV still do not know their status, 17.1 million are unable to access ART and more than half are not virally suppressed.
Quick Facts about UNAIDS:
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS
- Headquarters of UNAIDS is located in Geneva, Switzerland.
- Michel Sidibe is the current Executive Director of UNAIDS.
