Cape Town - Southern Africa is winning the war on HIV and Aids, with a dramatic increase in those using antiretroviral (ARV) therapy and the largest reduction in new adult infections in the world.
The Global Aids update 2016 report from UNAids, the Joint UN Programme on HIV/Aids, shows that globally the number of people accessing ARV drugs has more than doubled since 2010. An estimated 17 million people were accessing life-saving ARVs at the end of 2015, with an additional 2 million gaining access over just a 12-month period.
The report comes as world leaders prepare to gather for the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending Aids in New York later this month. The extraordinary scale-up of ARV treatment since 2010 by many of the world’s most affected countries has reduced Aids-related deaths from 1.5 million in 2010 to 1.1 million in 2015.
“The full potential of ARV therapy is being realised,” UNAids executive director Michel Sidibé said. “I urge all countries to seize this unprecedented opportunity to put HIV prevention and treatment programmes on the fast-track and end the Aids epidemic by 2030.”
Global coverage of ARV therapy reached 46 percent at the end of 2015. Gains were greatest in the world’s most affected region, eastern and southern Africa, where coverage in-creased from 24 percent in 2010 to 54 percent in 2015, reaching a total of 10.3 million people.
In South Africa, 3.4 million people had access to treatment.
The largest reduction in new adult infections also occurred in eastern and southern Africa. There were about 40 000 fewer adult HIV infections in the region in 2015 than in 2010.
Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation deputy director Linda-Gail Bekker said: “We have better tools now than ever before. Our treatments are better… and we have an increasing number and combination of preventions than we have had before.
“The problem now is to really be sure we reach the difficult to reach populations.”
She said innovation in vaccine and cure creation should continue to contribute to epidemic control.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says while the country has made significant progress in recent years, more than half of the people who need HIV treatment are still not getting treatment.
TAC campaigns officer Mary-Jane Matsolo said: “We need to provide treatment to the more than 18 million people who need HIV treatment, but who are still not getting it. Governments will have to invest much more money.”
The report says adolescent girls and young women between the age of 15 and 24 years are at higher risk of HIV infection globally, accounting for 20 percent of new HIV infections among adults globally in 2015, despite accounting for just 11 percent of the adult population.
In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women account for 25 percent of new HIV infections among adults. Harmful gender norms and inequalities, obstacles to education and sexual and reproductive health services, poverty, food insecurity and violence are the key drivers of this increased vulnerability, the report noted.
Matsolo said: “Many young people are becoming HIV-positive and/or pregnant. We have a moral obligation to provide these young people with proper sex education and the means to protect themselves – including easy access to condoms.”
More than 90 percent of new HIV infections in central Asia, Europe, North America, the Middle East and North Africa in 2014 are among people from key populations and their sexual partners, including gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers and people who inject drugs.
Cape Times