The Victorian AIDS Council (VAC) is supporting Star Observer’s coverage of the 2016 International Aids Conference in Durban by providing travel and accommodation for a VAC staff member to attend as a journalist.
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In a press conference in the morning, Ramaphosa said Africa is still lagging behind.
“People now live long, happy lives with HIV, when the virus is effectively managed with anti-retrovirals”.
“Many do not have money to pay for drugs and treatment”.
“Gains are inadequate – and fragile”, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the UN-sponsored global conference on AIDS.
UNAids director Michel Sidibé said new energy and innovation was needed to address the Aids crisis.
More than half the people around the world infected with HIV, or 20 million people, still don’t have access to treatment, Ban said. Globally, health care systems have improved, and more people now have access to antiretroviral treatment. “TB has high morbidity and mortality rates”, Parirenyatwa said.
Dave Roberts, who praised Ron Roberts for his efforts, said the county will find financial resources at both the federal and state level to help health workers in the fight against HIV infection.
Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and founding executive director of UNAIDS, said the figure was “staggering” and “means that AIDS is not over”.
“Ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 will require a dramatic change in how HIV prevention is pursued”. “We can not return to the slow lane or go slow in the fast lane”, said Rev Phumzile Mabizela, executive director of INERELA+, an interfaith network of religious leaders who are living with or are personally affected by HIV. The UN though has warned that efforts are lagging. Today, it remains to be a big challenge in the Asia-Pacific region. Annual deaths from HIV/AIDS have been declining at a steady pace from a peak of 1.8 million in 2005, to 1.2 million in 2015, partly due to the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy. Of these, only 17 million are receiving treatment.
“A few years ago, a person who had been diagnosed as HIV positive would have to take 18 pills and now they are only taking one”, he said.
Government said the South African delegation is using the conference to communicate to the worldwide community progress made by the country in pushing back the frontiers of the HIV and TB epidemic. Molokela says this is a major blow to fighting the pandemic.
Infections are soaring in North Africa and the Middle East, which now has the fastest-growing epidemic.
The first time the worldwide AIDS conference was held in Durban, South Africa in 2000, then-President Thabo Mbeki shocked the world by questioning whether HIV really causes AIDS.
Although Harare’s prevalence rate has dropped from an all-time high of over 30% to around 15%, Zimbabwe is still grappling with inadequate funding to curtail the disease.
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In sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for about 70 per cent of people in the world living with HIV, three out of every four adolescents newly infected by HIV in 2015 were girls.
