Poorva Chavan
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Written By: Poorva Chavan | Published : December 1, 2014 12:41 PM IST
According to a leading campaign group fighting HIV/AIDS, the world has started to crumble under the burden of AIDS epidemic, where millions have been infected and died because of the disease in the past 30 years.
The statistics paint a rosy picture by showing the decrease in number of new infections over the past one year as compared to last year.
A report to mark World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, by ONE campaign the advocacy group working to end poverty and preventable disease in Africa said that even if the unattainable has been achieved, it does not mean that eradication of AIDS is somewhere in the near future. (Read: World AIDS Day: Is lack of awareness delaying HIV eradication in India?)
ONE`s director of global health policy, Erin Hohlfelder, said that even if we have passed the tipping point in the fight to eradicate AIDS at the global level, all the countries have not reached that point, and thus, the progress made can easily be thwarted.
There s no cure for the HIV Infection which spread via blood, semen and breast milk, but AIDS can be kept at bay by a range of Anti Retroviral therapy (ART) drugs.
(Read: 11 things about HIV/AIDS you didn t know)
AIDS has claimed around 40 million lives worldwide since the epidemic began some 30 years ago. In 2013, 35 million people were living with HIV and 2.1 million people had contracted the infection. The total lives lost were 1.5 million and sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected of all the continents as per data given by United Nations.
Groups which are more stigmatized like gay men, sex workers and injecting drug users, are often neglected. Drug access remains an important issue of concern for them as HIV/AIDS is most concentrated in these groups. (Read: Is India s HIV/AIDS success story a farce?)
There has been a dramatic improvement in the number of people who had access to HIV drugs, with only 5 million people in 2010 and 13.6 million in 2013, as per United Naiton AIDS agency, UNAIDS.
Despite the good news, we should not take a victory lap yet, said Hohlfelder.
A $3 billion shortfall in the funds required to control HIV all over the world, proved a severe threat to the progress made so far.
We want to see bold new funding from a more diversified base, including more from African domestic budgets, she said.
Image source: Getty Images
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