World Can End AIDS by 2030 – UN Reveals

The UN has said the world can end the AIDS
epidemic within 15 years, but senior officials said

that would only be possible by breaking the
pharmaceutical industries “tight grip” on
government policies.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said
reaching the goal would be difficult but
achievable in a report released in Ethiopia on
Tuesday.
“Ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health
threat by 2030 is ambitious, but realistic, as the
history of the past 15 years has shown,” Ban
said in the report.
The UN Millennium Development Goal to halt and
reverse the spread of the disease has been
achieved, said UNAIDS, the global body’s agency
focusing on the disease.
UNAIDS is driving efforts to end the epidemic by
2030 by enabling everyone to have access to
prevention services, treatment and support.
“During the first decade of the epidemic, there
was very little to offer someone dying from
AIDS,” Michel Sidibe, executive director of
UNAIDS, said in the report.
The key to change, he said, was breaking the
pharmaceutical industry’s “tight grip” on
government policies and drug prices.
Some 15 million people are receiving
antiretroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, a
staggering increase from less than 700,000 in
2000.
At that time, patients had to take an average of
eight pills per day, costing $10,000 a year.
Today, medicines can be bought for $100 a year.
These medicines keep the virus from growing
and multiplying helping people to live longer and
reducing the chances that they will transmit HIV
to others.
Legislation allowing developing countries to
override patent rights was critical, allowing them
to manufacture copies of the drugs and cut
prices.
AIDS-related deaths have dropped more than 40
percent since 2004 to 1.2 million a year, the
report said, adding new HIV infections have
fallen by 35 percent since 2001 to 2 million a
year in 2014.
Investment in HIV/AIDS surged to almost $22bn
in 2015 from less than $5bn in 2001.
One of the biggest successes has been reducing
new infections among children by 58 percent
between 2000 and 2014, the agency said.
This has been achieved by ensuring women with
HIV receive medicine to prevent them from
passing on the infection when they give birth.
Last month, Cuba became the first country in the
world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission
of HIV.