UNAIDS adopts new global strategy

The new Global AIDS Strategy 2021-2026, "End Inequalities, End AIDS", is set to close the gaps preventing progress to end AIDS and sets out bold new targets and policies to be reached by 2025, Xinhua news agency reported. 

It consists of three strategic priorities -- maximise equitable and equal access to comprehensive people-centred HIV services; break down legal and societal barriers to achieving HIV outcomes; and fully resource and sustain HIV responses and integrate them into systems for health, social protection and humanitarian settings. 

According to UNAIDS, the strategy, if achieved, will reduce the number of people who newly acquire HIV from 1.7 million in 2019 to less than 370,000 by 2025, and the number of people dying from AIDS-related illnesses from 690,000 in 2019 to less than 250,000 in 2025. 

It will also eliminate new HIV infections among children by bringing down the number of new HIV infections from 150,000 in 2019 to less than 22,000 in 2025. 

Achieving these goals will require annual HIV-related investments in low and middle-income countries to rise to $29 billion by 2025, UNAIDS said, while the total resource needs for low income and lower-middle income countries is around $13.7 billion. 

"We are at a critical moment in our historic effort to end AIDS," said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. 

"Like HIV before it, Covid-19 has shown that inequality kills. Covid-19 has widened existing inequalities that block progress to ending AIDS. That's why I'm proud that our new strategy places tackling inequalities at its heart." 

According to UNAIDS, there are currently 38 million people globally living with HIV/AIDS, while 690,000 others have died.