Editorial Staff, July 16, 2019
According to the latest UNAIDS report, in 2018 an estimated 37.9 million people were infected with HIV, with 1.7 million new infections and 770,000 deaths.
It is estimated that in 2018 HIV infection affected 37.9 million people; 23.3 million had access to antiretroviral therapy and 1.7 million people contracted the infection, according to the latest report from the United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), entitled Communities at the center, which was presented in Eshowe, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
According to the organization, the document reflects a very uneven picture in which some countries are making great improvements in addressing HIV while in others both the number of infections and related deaths have increased.
UNAIDS warns that progress in the fight against HIV—reductions in new infections, access to treatment, and a decrease in HIV-related deaths—has slowed. “We urgently need political leadership to end HIV. This must begin with appropriate and smart investment, always looking at where success lies in certain countries. Ending AIDS is possible if we focus on patients, not the disease; if we create roadmaps to reach underserved patients and communities; and if we implement a human rights-based approach to reach the people most affected by HIV,” said Gunilla Carlsson, Executive Director of UNAIDS.
UNAIDS urges international donors to continue investing in the fight against HIV – following a $1 billion reduction in global resources to combat the infection – by injecting at least $14 billion into the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria in its October fundraising and into other entities.
According to the document, although new infections have reached 1.7 million people, this figure represents a 16 percent reduction since 2010, which they attribute to sustained efforts in most countries of eastern and southern Africa. In fact, UNAIDS cites South Africa as an example, which has reduced the number of new infections by more than 40 percent and deaths by nearly 40 percent, and where a community project in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, has met and far exceeded UNAIDS' 90-90-90 targets.
A community caregiver delivers antiretroviral treatment to a patient in Sunnydale, Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, as part of Doctors Without Borders' community program.
Although progress continues toward achieving the 90-90-90 targets, the figures vary by region and country. For example, according to UNAIDS, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 72 percent of infected patients knew their HIV-positive status in 2018, but only 53 percent had access to treatment.
Likewise, HIV-related deaths continue to decline in parallel with improvements in access to treatment. The report states that since 2010, deaths—1.7 million—have decreased by 33 percent, with an estimated 770,000 in 2018.
HIV figures in 2018:
• 37.9 million people are living with HIV, of whom 36.2 million are adults and 1.7 million are children under 15 years of age.
• 79 percent of HIV-positive patients know their HIV status.
• Nearly 8.1 million people do not know they are infected
However, in light of this figure, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has drawn attention to the fact that the decline in the annual number of AIDS-related deaths has stalled since 2014. “In 2016, UN member states approved the goal of reducing AIDS-related deaths by 50% by 2020. That is, to fewer than 500,000 per year. Six months after this deadline, we are far from achieving this goal. Deaths related to this disease were reduced by only 30,000 in 2018, when 770,000 died, compared to 800,000 in 2017 and 840,000 in 2016,” MSF explained in a statement.
“In hospitals supported by MSF in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Malawi, and other places, many deaths occur within 48 hours of admission,” explains Gilles Van Cutsem, MSF’s HIV/AIDS working group coordinator. Many of these deaths are due to serious opportunistic infections, such as tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, or Kaposi’s sarcoma.
“We cannot celebrate or speak of success while hundreds of thousands of people continue to die from AIDS-related causes each year because they lack access to basic HIV care, whether because they live in neglected countries, belong to forgotten population groups, or are ignored by policies. Preventing, detecting, and treating HIV and advanced AIDS requires more attention and funding, especially in low-coverage settings like West and Central Africa and among underserved populations,” Van Cutsem concludes.
Pediatric HIV infection
According to the UNAIDS report, 82 percent of pregnant women now have access to antiretroviral therapy, an increase of more than 90 percent since 2010, and has led to a 41 percent reduction in new pediatric HIV infections, with significant decreases in Botswana (85%), Rwanda (83%), Malawi (76%), Zimbabwe (69%), and Uganda (65%) since 2010. However, there have still been 160,000 new cases of pediatric HIV, a far cry from the target of reducing new infections in children to fewer than 40,000 by 2018.
Likewise, efforts need to be focused on expanding access to treatment for children, since the estimated 940,000 children aged 0-14 with HIV and on treatment in 2018 almost doubles the number of child patients on treatment in 2010 but does not meet the treatment target of 1.6 million set for 2018.
From: https://www.diariomedico.com/salud/en-2018-se-produjeron-17-millones-de-nuevas-infecciones-por-vih.html