More Than 50% AIDS Victims Get Treatment Now

India has finally got some glimmer of hope, when we consider the condition of HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country. A recent UNAIDS report has stated that more than half of the patients, who are living with AIDS, have access to treatment now. The good news doesn't end here, the report also says that AIDS related deaths have halved since 2005. "We met the 2015 target of 15 million people on treatment, and we are on track to double that number to 30 million and meet the 2020 target," said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "We will continue to scale up to reach everyone in need and honour our commitment of leaving no one behind."

But as always, there is some bad news accompanying this glimmer of hope. Despite improvements in the data, the study pointed out that majority of the cases are located in 10 countries, including India. "India is the country where most new HIV infections are occurring in the Asia-Pacific region. While India has made big progress with new infections dropping significantly, the emergence of HIV in some locations that were earlier considered 'not high-burden' areas is a cause for concern.," said Eamonn Murphy, Director, UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Asia-Pacific.

To achieve the globally set target of treatment of 30 million people by 2020, we need to work upon our market barriers which inhibit the access to medicine. The report states that "although important progress has been made in improving access to medicines for people living with HIV, insufficient availability and poor affordability of essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries remain major barriers."

There was a sharp decline in the people who got infected from AIDS in 1997(3.2 million) and those in 2016(1.8 million). But since then our decline has only been a measly 16%. In face of these trends, our aim of reducing the number to 500,000 such victims by 2020 seems unattainable.

Also read: Some Vaginal Bacteria May Render HIV Drug Ineffective

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