More than half of all people living with HIV now have access to treatment while AIDS-related deaths have halved since 2005, according to a new UNAIDS report.
The report, Ending AIDS: progress towards the 90–90–90 targets, shows that last year 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV had access to treatment and that AIDS-related deaths have fallen from 1.9 million in 2005 to one million in 2016.
It says that provided the scale-up continues, the world is now on track to reach the global target of 30 million people on treatment by 2020.
The 90-90-90 targets were launched in 2014 to accelerate progress so that by 2020, 90 per cent of all people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90 per cent of all people with diagnosed HIV are accessing sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90 per cent of all people accessing antiretroviral therapy are virally suppressed.
The report shows that as of 2016, some 70 per cent of people living with HIV now know their HIV status and that of those who do, 77 per cent were accessing treatment. Of the 77 per cent accessing treatment, some 80 per cent were virally supressed, protecting their health and helping to prevent transmission of the virus.
It shows that eastern and southern Africa as well as western and central Europe and North and Latin America are on track to reach the targets by 2020 and that the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific regions can also reach the targets if programmes are further accelerated.
Seven nations – Botswana, Cambodia, Denmark, Iceland, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – have already reached the targets.
Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS, said communities and families are thriving as AIDS is “being pushed back”. “As we bring the epidemic under control, health outcomes are improving and nations are becoming stronger.”
