'Need to provide equitable access to HIV prevention, treatment to end AIDS epidemic'

New Delhi: The WHO on Thursday highlighted the urgent need to provide everyone equitable access to HIV prevention, treatment and care to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.

Globally, an estimated 38.4 million people are living with HIV. In 2021, an estimated 1.5 million people acquired HIV and around 6,50,000 people died from AIDS-related causes, said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia.

In the South-East Asia Region, an estimated 3.8 million people are living with HIV, accounting for around 10 per cent of the global burden, she said on World AIDS Day.

In 2021, an estimated 82,000 people in the region died of AIDS-related causes, accounting for more than 12 per cent of the global burden.The inequalities which keep the AIDS epidemic alive are not inevitable. Together, we must end inequality and accelerate progress towards our targets and goals, Singh said.

"On World AIDS Day, WHO reiterates its commitment to achieve a region and world in which AIDS is no longer a public health threat, leaving no individual, community or population behind," she said.

Amid the Covid response and recovery, the region continues to take targeted action to end HIV-related inequalities and expand service coverage in line with its priority on achieving universal health coverage and the region's new Integrated Action Plan for viral hepatitis, HIV and sexually transmitted infections (I-RAP 2022-2026), launched in September 2022.

Between 2010 and 2021, new HIV infections in the region declined by 42 per cent and HIV-related deaths reduced by 63 per cent.

"We have people and populations to reach, and progress to achieve. Across the region, almost 95 per cent of new HIV infections are among key populations such as sex workers, people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, and transgenders," Singh said.

She also said that just 22 per cent of young people have knowledge about HIV prevention, and coverage of testing for people who inject drugs has significant room for improvement.