Beginning of the end for AIDS -Campaign group

The world has finally reached “the beginning of the end” of
the AIDS pandemic that has infected and killed millions
in the past 30 years, according to a leading campaign
group fighting HIV.
The number of people newly infected with HIV over the
last year was lower than the number of HIV-positive
people who joined those getting access to the medicines they
need to take for life to keep AIDS at bay.
But in a report to mark World AIDS Day on
December 1, the ONE campaign, an advocacy group
working to end poverty and preventable disease in African
countries, warned that reaching this milestone did not mean
the end of AIDS was around the corner.
“We’ve passed the tipping point in the AIDS fight at the
global level, but not all countries are there yet, and the
gains made can easily stall or unravel,” Erin Hohlfelder,
ONE’s director of global health policy, said.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes
AIDS is spread via blood, semen and breast milk. There
is no cure for the infection, but AIDS can be kept at bay
for many years with cocktails of antiretroviral drugs.
United Nations data, reported by the Reuters news
agency, showed that in 2013, 35 million people were living
with HIV, 2.1 million people were newly infected with
the virus and some 1.5 million people died of AIDS. By
far the greatest part of the HIV/AIDS burden is in
sub-Saharan Africa.
The AIDS pandemic began more than 30 years ago and
has killed up to 40 million people worldwide.
The United Nations AIDS agency, UNAIDS, says
that, by June 2014, some 13.6 million people globally had
access to AIDS drugs, a dramatic improvement on the 5
million who were getting treatment in 2010.
“Despite the good news, we should not take a victory lap
yet,” said Hohlfelder.
She highlighted several threats to current progress,
including a $3 billion shortfall in the funds needed each
year to control HIV around the world.
“We want to see bold new funding from a more
diversified base, including more from African domestic
budgets,” she said.
ONE also noted that HIV is increasingly concentrated
among hard-to-reach populations such as injecting drug
users, gay men and sex workers – groups who are often
stigmatised and have trouble accessing treatment and
prevention services.