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AIDS was supposed to be defeated by 2030, then came the coronavirus – AZERTAG

Baku, July 7. AZERTAC

Infection with HIV was once considered a death sentence, but now it is easy to treat the viral disease. In around ten years’ time, the HIV / AIDS epidemic should actually be considered defeated – this is the goal the global community had set itself. But that is far from being the case, the UN organization for HIV / AIDS UNAIDS reported at the start of the virtual world AIDS conference.

New programs, initiatives and investments should therefore help to ensure that the number of new infections does not exceed the 500,000 mark. However, an estimated 1.7 million people worldwide contracted the virus last year.

“The coronavirus pandemic threatens to take us even further off course,” said UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima in Geneva. Growing poverty as a result of the economic standstill leads to increased domestic violence and threatens girls and young women in particular: it drives people into precarious situations where the risk of HIV infection increases, said Byanyima.

“The world has invested too little” – In addition, infected people could sometimes not go to doctors, says the report, which was available to the German press agency in advance. Condom production is also restricted. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 73 countries are already running the risk of running out of HIV medication. 24 countries have already reported major replenishment problems or almost empty warehouses. In these 24 countries live a third of the people who receive the important antiretroviral therapy.

Interrupting antiretroviral medication for only 20 percent of those infected with HIV for six months would result in an additional 110,000 deaths, according to UNAIDS. Eric Goemaere of the MSF aid organization in South Africa described this as unacceptable: “We cannot withdraw from the HIV / AIDS epidemic because of the Covid 19 pandemic.”

There has been progress, but they are unevenly distributed, said Byanyima. In Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Latin America as well as in the Middle East and North Africa, the development is not good. Nevertheless, she believes that the goal of ending the epidemic by 2030 can still be achieved with new efforts. A good example is the small kingdom of Eswatini (formerly: Swaziland) in southern Africa. The country, with around one million inhabitants, reduced the number of new infections from around 13,000 in 2010 to 6,500 in 2019, as Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini said.

Progress also included that in 2019 three times as many people were treated with antiretroviral therapy as in 2010, the report said. At the end of last year, this was 25.4 million of the estimated 38 million people infected with HIV worldwide. 690,000 people died as a result of their infection in 2019, 39 percent fewer than in 2010 – but significantly more than had been targeted for 2020: According to the goal, only 500,000 people should die this year. The number of new infections, 1.7 million, was 2019 as low as it has not been since 1989.

Still, that’s not enough. “The world has under-invested, under-provided treatment, and failed to flatten the curves of new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths,” the report said. In 2019, only a good two thirds of the funds would have been available for information and treatment. “This collective failure (…) has a high price: Between 2015 and 2020 there were 3.5 million more infections and 820,000 more deaths related to AIDS than would have been the case if the world had been on schedule, to meet the 2020 targets. “

According to estimates by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), HIV infections in Germany are declining slightly: In 2018, around 2,400 people were infected with HIV. Since 2015, the HIV treatment guidelines have recommended treating every diagnosed HIV infection in Germany immediately with antiretroviral therapy. The recommendation to use condoms remains a cornerstone of the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

AZERTAG.AZ :AIDS was supposed to be defeated by 2030, when the coronavirus came

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