A new era of hope for HIV/AIDS

A United Nations report says the number of AIDS-related deaths worldwide has fallen for the fifth year in a row to 1.7 million people in 2011.

That’s down 5.6 per cent from 2010 and 24 per cent when compared with 2005.

The annual report by UNAIDS on the state of the global pandemic estimates the number of people living with HIV rose slightly to 34 million from 33.5 million in 2010.

The United Nations says 25 countries, many in Africa, have at least halved new HIV infections in the past decade and there has been particular progress towards protecting children from the deadly virus.

“We are moving from despair to hope,” the executive director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe told reporters in Geneva.

He says half of all reductions in new HIV infections in the past two years have been among children: “It is becoming evident that achieving zero new HIV infections in children is possible.”

UNAIDS regional director, Asia and the Pacific, Steve Kraus, has told Radio Australia’s Connect Asia program that across South Asia, South-East Asia and East Asia, the picture is mixed.

He says there have been some impressive gains in the last 10 years with rates down 25 per cent or more in countries including Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Burma, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Thailand.

But in a number of countries including Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the rate of new infections has increased by 25 per cent in the past decade.

Mr Kraus says the successful countries have the common approach of focussing programs on key populations such as men who have sex with men, people who buy and sell sex, transgender populations and people who inject drugs.

“If we design good programs and implement good programs with [the key populations], we see success and when countries do not do that, they haven’t achieved success,” he said.

UNAIDS says around the world, 25 low and middle-income countries have managed to at least halve their rate of new HIV infections since 2001.

More than half of those countries were in Africa, the region most affected by HIV, where Malawi cut new infections by 73 per cent and Botswana by 68 per cent.

Globally, new HIV infections fell to 2.5 million last year from 2.6 million in 2010 which is a 20 per cent drop from 2001.

“The pace of progress is quickening. What used to take a decade is now being achieved in 24 months,” Mr Sidibe said.

UNAIDS says a new era of hope has emerged in countries and communities across the world that have previously been devastated by AIDS.

In the epicentre of the epidemic, sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people dying from AIDS-related causes fell by 32 per cent between 2005 and 2011.

In the Caribbean, which has the second-highest rate of infection, deaths fell by 42 per cent in the same period.

However, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, deaths increased by 21 per cent.

UNAIDS credits the drop in AIDS-related deaths to greater access to antiretroviral therapy and the steady decline in HIV infection since the peak in 1997. –ABC/AFP