Last updated on: 31 July 2024
Figures from the new UNAIDS report ‘The Urgency of Now – AIDS at a Crossroads’, launched at the 25th International AIDS Conference taking place in Germany this week, show that the AIDS response is making little progress globally. For the first time in the history of the HIV pandemic, more new infections are occurring outside sub-Saharan Africa than within. Three regions are experiencing rising numbers of new HIV infections: Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa. People from key populations and their sex partners continue to be neglected in most HIV programmes.
The HIV pandemic today
Far fewer children (0–14 years) are acquiring HIV, a trend that is due largely to successes in eastern and southern Africa, where the annual number of new HIV infections in children fell by 73% between 2010 and 2023. Widening access to antiretroviral therapy has more than halved the annual number of AIDS-related deaths, from 1.3 million in 2010 to 630,000 in 2023, including 76 000 children aged 0–14 years—one in eight people who died due to AIDS in 2023 was a child.
Inadequate political will
The scale of the HIV pandemic is so large, however, that even these accomplishments still left about 9.3 million people living with HIV without treatment in 2023. There is inadequate political will to fund and provide prevention programmes for people from key populations, and hostile legal and social conditions further limit their access to lifesaving services. Persistent stigma and discrimination related to HIV status, gender, behaviours or sexuality also stand in the way.
Looking beyond the crossroads
An evolving pandemic and shifting context have brought the HIV response to a crossroads. The decisions and actions taken now will have a lasting impact on the world’s effort to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat. Aidsfonds calls for a renewed global commitment to end AIDS, with a focus on improved legislation, increased access to medication and tackled stigma and discrimination.
The end of AIDS is a political choice. We have shown in the Netherlands that we can control the AIDS epidemic. However, the AIDS response does not stop at our national borders. The Netherlands has the knowledge and the duty to join the AIDS response worldwide.
– Mark Vermeulen, Director Aidsfonds
