Fewer people contracted HIV last year than at any point since the rise of the disease in the late 1980s, the United Nations said Tuesday, warning that this decline was still far too slow.
Around 1.3 million people contracted the disease in 2023, according to a new report from the UNAIDS agency.
That is still more than three times higher than needed to reach the UN’s goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
Around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses last year, the lowest level since a peak of 2.1 million in 2004, the report said ahead of World AIDS Day on Sunday.
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Much of the progress was attributed to antiretroviral treatments that can reduce the amount of the virus in the blood of patients.
Out of the nearly 40 million people living with HIV around the world, some 9.3 million are not receiving treatment, the report warned.
And despite the global progress, 28 countries recorded an increase in HIV infections last year.
Efforts to make preventative treatment called Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) available in these countries have seen “very slow progress”, the report pointed out.
“Only 15 per cent of people who need PrEP were receiving it in 2023,” the report said.
UNAIDS deputy director Christine Stegling said that “progress has been driven by biomedical advances, advances in the protection of human rights and by community activism”.
“But big gaps in the protection of human rights remain, and these gaps are keeping the world from getting on the path that ends AIDS,” she told an online press conference.
She warned that if current trends continue, “we will end up with a much, much higher number of people living with HIV, long after 2030”.
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