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The world is heading for a 'generation free of AIDS' by 2030, UN chief claims

Claims ending epidemic by 2030 is 'ambitious, but realistic'
Highlighted success in rolling out life-saving drugs over last 15 years
New HIV infections have fallen by 35% since 2001 to 2 million a year in 2014

Published: 03:35 EST, 14 July 2015 | Updated: 14:17 EST, 14 July 2015

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The world can end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, the United Nations said on Tuesday, highlighting global success in rolling out life-saving drugs over the last 15 years.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goal to halt and reverse the spread of the disease has been achieved, said UNAIDS, the global body's agency focusing on the disease.

UNAIDS is driving efforts to end the epidemic by 2030 by enabling everyone to have access to prevention services, treatment and support.

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world was headed for a 'generation free of AIDS', after UNAIDS reported a 35 percent drop in new HIV infections from 15 years ago.

AIDS FACTS AND FIGURES

AIDS-related deaths have dropped more than 40 percent since 2004 to 1.2 million a year, the report said.

New HIV infections have fallen by 35 percent since 2001 to 2 million a year in 2014.

Investment in HIV/AIDS surged to almost $22 billion in 2015 from less than $5 billion in 2001.

One of the most remarkable successes has been reducing new infections among children by 58 percent between 2000 and 2014, the agency said.

'Ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 is ambitious, but realistic, as the history of the past 15 years has shown,' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report released at a financing conference in Ethiopia on Tuesday.

He said the world was headed for a 'generation free of AIDS', after UNAIDS reported a 35 percent drop in new HIV infections from 15 years ago.

'The world has delivered.

'We have achieved and exceeded the... goals regarding AIDS. We have 15 million people on HIV treatment.

'We are on the way to a generation free of AIDS,' Ban said in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where he is attending a global development summit.

Some 15 million people are receiving antiretroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, a staggering increase from less than 700,000 in 2000.

At that time, patients had to take an average of eight pills per day, costing $10,000 a year.

Today, medicines can be bought for $100 a year.

These medicines keep the virus from growing and multiplying - helping people to live longer and reducing the chances that they will transmit HIV to others.

'During the first decade of the epidemic, there was very little to offer someone dying from AIDS,' Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said in the report.

New HIV infections have fallen by 35 percent since 2001 to 2 million a year in 2014.

HOW HIV INFECTS

HIV infects CD4+ T-cells, which play a vital role in the immune system and protect us from diseases. As HIV progresses, it reduces the number of active T-cells in the body until the immune system cannot function correctly, a state known as 'acquired immune deficiency syndrome' or AIDS.

Current World Health Organisation guidelines, which the UK government follows, recommend only beginning HIV treatment when the number of T-cells in the bloodstream falls below a certain level.

However, the new model predicts that treatment should start as soon as possible after infection to prevent AIDS from developing in the long term.

'The best you could hope for was that your family wouldn't throw you out.'

The key to change, he said, was breaking the pharmaceutical industry's 'tight grip' on government policies and drug prices.

Legislation allowing developing countries to override patent rights was critical, allowing them to manufacture copies of the drugs and cut prices.

AIDS-related deaths have dropped more than 40 percent since 2004 to 1.2 million a year, the report said.

New HIV infections have fallen by 35 percent since 2001 to 2 million a year in 2014.

Investment in HIV/AIDS surged to almost $22 billion in 2015 from less than $5 billion in 2001.

One of the most remarkable successes has been reducing new infections among children by 58 percent between 2000 and 2014, the agency said.

HIV: the facts explained by a medical expert

This has been achieved by ensuring women with HIV receive medicine to prevent them from passing on the infection when they give birth.

Last month, Cuba became the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned against complacency, pointing out in a statement that more than half of almost 37 million people living with HIV worldwide still do not have access to treatment.