2024 is crucial for AIDS to cease being a threat, says UNAIDS

The measures taken by political leaders this year will be decisive in achieving the goal of ending the AIDS as a threat to public health by 2030, the agency said Monday. UN dedicated to fighting the disease.

The 2023 figures show a global improvement in the number of new infections, the treatment of HIV-positive patients and a decline in mortality, but UNAIDS recalled that the pandemic has killed more than 42 million people and that progress remains fragile.

In 2023, just under 40 million people were living with the virus that causes AIDS, HIV, according to the organization’s annual report.

Around 1.3 million new infections were recorded last year, 100,000 fewer than in 2022, which is also a significant decrease from the peak of 3.3 million reached in 1995.

But UNAIDS is not satisfied because the target of no more than 330,000 infections by 2025 seems unattainable.

AIDS also killed fewer people: 630,000 deaths in 2023, compared to 670,000 the previous year. That figure is 69% less than in 2004, the black year of the pandemic. Access to antiretroviral therapy is the main challenge, since it is very effective today.

By the end of December 2024, 30.7 million people had access to one of these therapies, compared to just 7.7 million in 2010, but the figure remains far from the 2025 target of 34 million people.

In addition, nearly a quarter of people infected with the virus do not have access to treatment.

Eastern and Southern Africa remain the most affected regions, with 20.8 million people living with HIV, 450,000 infected last year and 260,000 deaths.

Stigmatization and infection

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, highlighted that “the world is not on the right track” to achieve the 2030 goal, and that “Not enough is being done to eliminate the inequalities that enable the HIV pandemic” continue.

“One person dies every minute from HIV-related diseases,” he remembered.

The stigmatization and discrimination, and sometimes criminalization, of certain groups of people results in much higher rates of infection because they cannot get the help and care they need without facing danger.

The numbers speak for themselves: the global prevalence of HIV among adults aged 15 to 49 is 0.8%.

But the prevalence is 23% among young women and girls aged 15 to 24 in eastern and southern Africa, and 7.7% among homosexuals and other men who have sex with men.

It also reaches 3% among sex workers, 5% among injectable drug users, 9.2% among transgender people and 1.3% among incarcerated people.

Coordinated action

In an interview with AFP, Byanyima denounced “a well-coordinated and well-funded effort” against LGBTI+ rights, reproductive rights and gender equality by socially conservative countries and groups.

And while in some sub-Saharan African countries new infections have fallen by more than half and deaths have dropped by as much as 60% Since 2010, “tWe also have regions such as Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Latin America where new infections are moving in the wrong direction, increasing”he stressed.

In Latin America, 120,000 new infections were recorded in 2023 (compared to 110,000 in 2022) and 2.3 million people were living with HIV. Some 30,000 people died from AIDS.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, only half of people living with HIV are receiving care, and only 49% in North Africa and the Middle East.

To underscore the message, which will feature prominently at the 25th International AIDS Conference that begins Monday in Germany, Byanyima and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk issued a joint statement last week.

“Stigmatization kills. Solidarity saves lives”they said in the statement.

“We jointly call on all countries to repeal all punitive laws against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Decriminalizing LGBTI+ people is essential to protect the rights and health of everyone.”they expressed.