UN: treatment available to more AIDS patients
Print Edition
MORE than 18 million people now have access to life-saving AIDS treatment, 1.2 million more than at the end of last year, the United Nations said yesterday.
In a report on the AIDS pandemic, which has infected 78 million people and killed 35 million since it began in the 1980s, UNAIDS said the strong scale-up of treatment has seen annual AIDS-related deaths fall by 45 percent to 1.1 million in 2015 from a peak of about 2 million in 2005.
But, as more HIV-positive people live longer, the challenges of caring for them as they get older, of preventing the virus spreading and of reducing new infections are tough, UNAIDS said, even though drugs can reduce virus levels in a patient’s blood to near zero and reduce the risk of passing it on. “The progress we have made is remarkable, particularly around treatment, but it is also incredibly fragile,” UNAIDS’ executive director Michel Sidibe said.
With detailed data showing some of the many complexities of the HIV epidemic, the report found that people are particularly vulnerable to HIV at certain points in their lives. It called for “life-cycle” approach to offer help and prevention measures for everyone at every stage of life.
As people with HIV grow older, they are at risk of developing long-term side-effects from HIV treatment, developing drug resistance and requiring cure for other illnesses such as tuberculosis and hepatitis C.
The report also cited data showing that young South African women who become infected with HIV often catch the virus from older men. It said prevention is vital to ending the epidemic in young women and the cycle of HIV infection needs to be broken.
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