The results were announced on Tuesday at the Durban International AIDS Conference in South Africa, where delegates are discussing the United Nations target of ending AIDS as a global health crisis by 2030.
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Only 17 million of the 36.7 million HIV positive people around the world are taking antiretroviral treatment.
However, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 report, which tracks the incidence and treatment trends of HIV/AIDS in 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2015, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has been steadily increasing and reached 38.8 million in 2015 (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 37.6-40.4 million). Last year, 259 volunteers were given the vaccination and a small trial also took place in Thailand in 2009.
In 2015, three-quarters of new infections (1.8 million) were in sub-Saharan Africa.
While the annual number of new infections has decreased since its peak at 3.3 million per year in 1997, it has stayed relatively constant at around an estimated 2.5 million a year worldwide for the past decade. Dr Wang warned that at this rate, achieving the 90-90-90 goals – aim for 90 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status, 90 per cent of people diagnosed with HIV receiving antiretroviral therapy, and 90 per cent of people receiving antiretroviral therapy experiencing viral suppression – by 2020 was a distant reality.
By the shores of Lake Victoria, which has the highest prevalence rates in Kenya, tests were offered on the beach at night so that fishermen, who sleep during the day, could attend.
“It is impossible to say exactly how far we are, but one thing we can say is that over the last seven years we have made important strides in the direction of getting a vaccine”, he said, “but getting an HIV vaccine will probably be one of the most important and hard scientific challenges in all of HIV research”.
The largest generation in history is entering the age where they are most at risk of HIV, Gates said.
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The Prince continued: “When my mother held the hand of a man dying of AIDS in an East London hospital, no one would have imagined that just over a quarter of a century later treatment would exist that could see HIV-positive people live full, healthy, loving lives”. She smashed the stigma around HIV on more than one occasion.
