Why in news?

The United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) report has recently been released.

What are the highlights of the report?

• The report titled, “Ending AIDS: Progress towards the 90–90–90 target”, is the annual scorecard for progress.
• Globally AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since 2005.
• The 2015 target of 15 million people on treatment has been met.
• Efforts to double the target to 30 million by 2020 are on right track.
• As of last year, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million HIV+ patients had access to treatment.
• Nearly 95 per cent of the cases in 2016 were concentrated in just 10 countries. India is one of them.
• India has 2.1 million people living with HIV, with 80,000 new infections annually, as of 2016.
• India is the country where most new HIV infections are occurring in the Asia-Pacific region.
• The emergence of HIV in some locations that were earlier considered ‘not high-burden’ area is a cause for concern.
• There is an insufficient availability and poor affordability of essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries.
• Actions focused on the intersections between intellectual property rights, innovation, and public health are vitally important for resolving market failures in medicine development and manufacture.
• The global AIDS response continues its reliance on the Indian industry.
• India supplied nearly 90% of antiretroviral medicines in low- and middle-income countries in 2015.
• Experts maintain that since 2010, the decline in new infections has only been 16%.
• Going by this trend, the global target of reducing the figure to 500,000 a year by 2020 seems unattainable.

Quick Facts

90-90-90 target

• The idea behind the 90-90-90 target is to diagnose 90% of people who are HIV positive; get 90% of the diagnosed HIV+ people on antiretroviral treatment, and 90% of those on antiretroviral should be virally suppressed.
• This is attained when an HIV+ patient’s viral load reaches an undetectable level, curbing transmission.

UNAIDS

• The United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
• UNAIDS is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
• It is a member of the United Nations Development Group.

Source: The Hindu