Back in 2000, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) had a lofty goal: to treat 15 million people suffering from HIV by 2015. Fifteen years later, with 9 months to spare, NIADS has not only reached its goal but exceeded it as well, putting it on track to stop AIDS by 2030.
According to a report released Tuesday by UNAIDS, rates for new HIV infections have dropped by 35 percent while deaths related to AIDS have been cut by 41 percent. This means that, since 2000, the global response to the diseases have led to preventing 30 million new cases of HIV and saving almost 8 million people from AIDS-related deaths.
The report also showed that responding to the HIV problem was one of the best investments made for global health and development as improvements in the health of the people also translated to improvements in economies. It also pointed out the global community is on track towards meeting its $22-billion investment target by 2015 for AIDS response.
Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS executive director said that 15 years ago, AIDS was considered to be an "others" disease. Treatment was mostly geared towards the rich, leaving out the poor that also got sick. Nobody even truly talked about HIV or AIDS.
"We proved them wrong, and today we have 15 million people on treatment—15 million success stories," he stated.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world has delivered on stopping and reversing AIDS as an epidemic, urging all to continue committing towards fighting the disease and ending it once and for all.
Before the Millennium Development Goal 6 for HIV was created in 2000, the world saw 8,500 new people every day getting sick with the HIV virus while 4,300 died of illnesses related to AIDS. When leaders started taking AIDS seriously, rates of infection dropped, going from 3.1 million to 2 million from 2000 to 2014. If nothing was done to address HIV and AIDS, the number of new infections every year would have ballooned by 2014 to about 6 million.
In 2014, the UNAIDS report also showed that in 83 countries, which represent 83 percent of all individuals living with HIV, epidemics had been stopped or reversed. Some of these countries enjoying major progress in fighting HIV and AIDS include Zimbabwe, Kenya, India, South Africa and Mozambique.
UNAIDS also released a book called How AIDS changed everything-MDG 6: 15 years, 15 lesson of hope from the AIDS response as a look-back at global efforts from the last 15 years and as a means as well of looking forward to a future without HIV and AIDS.
Photo: Jon Rawlinson | Flickr
