Aids targets under threat

Global progress on ending the Aids epidemic by 2030 could be blown off course by coronavirus, a senior UN director has warned.

Just a six-month disruption to medical supplies induced by Covid-19 could result in an extra 500,000 Aids-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2021, according to data modelling in the annual report from UNAids. The agency’s executive director, Winnie Byanyima, said the world is already way off target on combating Aids, and the pandemic “has the potential to blow us even further off course”.

Since 2010 new HIV infections have been reduced globally by 23% but progress has been erratic. Infections decreased by 38% in eastern and southern Africa, but rose by 72% in eastern Europe and central Asia, 22% in the Middle East and north Africa and by 21% in Latin America. The report found that people living with HIV/Aids were more likely to live in conditions that made physical distancing difficult. They had a “modestly increased risk” of dying of Covid-19, it says.

Byanyima said the findings highlighted the scale of the HIV epidemic and “how it runs along the fault lines of inequalities”, and were a call to action.

“HIV has been slipping down the international agenda for some years. That is why I am calling on leaders to come forward to support a UN general assembly high level meeting on ending Aids in 2021 to address with urgency the outstanding issues that are holding us back from ending the epidemic as a public health threat by 2030,” she said.

Insufficient investment in efforts to tackle HIV has meant millions do not have treatment or testing. Approximately 38 million people are now living with HIV, 25.4 million of whom are on medication, the report says.

Failure to meet the 2020 target to reduce Aids-related deaths to 500,000 or less, and new HIV infections to the same figure or less, has come “at a terrible price”. From 2015 to 2020, there were 3.5 million more HIV infections, and 820,000 more Aids-related deaths than there should have been if targets were met.

Last year, 690,000 deaths were Aids-related, and 1.7 million new infections were recorded.-theguardian