Though the number of new HIV infections has decreased since a peak of 3.3 million in 1997, it has been relatively stable at about 2.5 million a year for the past decade.
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It was published to coincide with the International AIDS conference underway in Durban, South Africa to assess progress in stemming an outbreak that has killed more than 30 million people since the 1980s.
China’s health officials have also complained to police about the alleged leak, which the World Health Organisation and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS on Monday termed as a violation of the fundamental right to patient confidentiality.
Regarding other donors, Kaiser Family Foundation vice president and director of global health and HIV policy, Jen Kates, pointed out they had faced “many competing funding demands”, including emergencies like the war in Syria and the refugee crisis, “against a backdrop of fiscal austerity in a number of countries”.
Today, there are some 38.8 million people living with the AIDS-causing virus, a steady increase from 28 million in 2000 thanks to the advent in 1996 of life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy (ART).
The consultancy has created a new “human-centred” visual approach for the AIDS and HIV support organisation, using the well-known red ribbon symbol at the centre of its design.
Another factor that has helped cut the death rate was education and medicines to prevent infected women passing the virus onto their unborn children, said the report. “As soon as a patient with HIV is on treatment with a suppressed viral load, the risk of transmission becomes minimal”.
The study saw researchers collate HIV data recorded from 1980 to 2015 for 195 countries.
The picture varied vastly between countries and regions.
Many people, however, are still battling to access ARVs and with the dwindling funding there is great need for additional funding from the country’s local and global benefactors.
The research team arrived at these conclusions after reviewing data from a total of 88 studies covering close to twenty years between 1990 and 2013 and involving nearly 56,000 children with HIV, living in low and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia.
A daily dose of anti-HIV medication nearly eradicates the risk of infection for people in a relationship with an HIV positive partner, a study showed on Tuesday, raising hopes of reducing HIV rates among one of Africa’s highest risk groups.
South Africa has the world’s largest population of people living with HIV, accounting for 6.8 million of the 36.7 million infected globally.
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The theme of the OAFLA assembly was “Advancing Sustainable Partnerships to end paediatric AIDS and improve Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights”.
