Report outlines progress in Aids fight

A report by a global organisation, ONE, released today has outlined progress in Aids fight in three key targets—virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission, 15 million people on treatment and drastic reduction of new HIV infections.

The report finds that without a heightened sense of urgency and collective action starting in 2013, winning the battle against Aids will remain a distant ambition and millions of lives will hang in the balance.

In 2012, the organisation produced the first in a series of annual accountability reports on Aids, in which the group assessed progress towards the vision of the “beginning of the end of Aids”.

ONE and others in the scientific and advocacy communities, defined the vision as a tipping point where the number of people newly infected with HIV in a given year is equal to, and eventually lower than the number of HIV-positive people newly receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in the same year.

ONE, according to the report, also outlined three key targets on which world leaders should focus significant attention to make headway against the disease.

The virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015, access to treatment for 15 million HIV-positive individuals by 2015 and the drastic reduction of new adult and adolescent HIV infections, to approximately 1.1 million or fewer annually, by 2015, are the three key areas ONE outlined for world leaders to focus on.

ONE’s 2012 report, The Beginning of the End? Tracking Global Commitments on Aids, found that the world made significant progress in improving access to treatment and in providing services to HIV-positive women to prevent transmission of the virus to their children, but that progress had been lagging in preventing new HIV infections for adolescents and adults.

In addition, the report states, while it was important that leaders had begun to call for “the beginning of the end of Aids”, there was not yet sufficient sense of urgency for achieving it.

It reads: “Based on ONE’s calculations in the 2012 report, projected trends showed that the tipping point would not be met until 2022.

“Now, one year later, ONE’s 2013 analysis shows that the world has achieved a marked acceleration in its progress towards the achievement of the beginning of the end of Aids.”

Malawi is among top four countries in Africa that allocated a substantial funding of over 18 percent towards Aids.