A new report from UNAIDS has highlighted the right to health as the key to ending AIDS with remarkable progress made on HIV treatment, ahead of the World AIDS Day.
Access to treatment, the report estimates, has risen significantly from 685,000 in 2000 to around 20.9 million in June 2017, with people living with HIV having access to antiretroviral therapy, the life-saving medicines.
Such a dramatic scale-up could not have happened without the courage and determination of people living with HIV demanding and claiming their rights, backed up by steady, strong leadership and financial commitment.
“Many people do not remember that in 2000 there were only 90 people in South Africa on treatment,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS, speaking in Khayelitsha, South Africa, during the launch. “Today, South Africa has the biggest life-saving treatment programme in the world with more than 4 million people receiving treatment. This is the kind of acceleration we need to encourage, sustain and replicate.”
According to statistics from the report, the rise in the number of people on treatment is keeping more people living with HIV alive and well. Scientific research has also shown that a person living with HIV who is adhering to an effective regime of antiretroviral therapy is up to 97% less likely to transmit HIV.
As treatment access has been scaled up for pregnant women living with HIV, new HIV infections among children have been rapidly reduced. From 2010 to 2016, new HIV infections among children were reduced by 56% in eastern and southern Africa, the region most affected by HIV, and by 47% globally.
The challenges now are to ensure that the 17.1 million people in need of treatment, including 1.2 million children, can access the medicines and to put HIV prevention back at the top of public health programming, particularly in the countries in which new HIV infections are rising.
The new report from UNAIDS, ‘Right to Health’ noted that the people most marginalized in society and most affected by HIV are still facing major challenges in accessing the health and social services they urgently need.
In 2016, around 1.8 million people were newly infected with HIV, a 39% decrease from the 3 million who became newly infected at the peak of the epidemic in the late 1990s.
In sub-Saharan Africa, new HIV infections have fallen by 48% since 2000. New HIV infections are rising at a rapid pace in countries that have not expanded health and HIV services to the areas and the populations where they are most effective.
UNAIDS’ Right to Health report makes it clear that states have basic human rights obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the right to health.
The report gives voice to the communities most affected by HIV—including people living with HIV, sex workers, people who use drugs, gay men and other men who have sex with men and young people—on what the right to health means to them. ZJ/22/11/17
By Zainab Joaque
Thursday November 23, 2017.
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