UN: AIDS death down a third globally since 2010

HIV-related deaths last year fell to around 770,000 some 33 per cent lower than in 2010 the United Nations said Tuesday.

An estimated 37.9 million people now live with HIV -- a record 23.3 million of those have access to some antiretroviral therapy (ART), UNAIDS said in its annual report.

Highlighting the enormous progress made since the height of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1990s, the report showed that the number of people dying from the disease fell from 800,000 in 2017 to 770,000 last year.

The figure was down by more than a third from 2010 when there were 1.2 million AIDS-related deaths.

But it also exposed weaknesses in the world's fight against AIDS as global efforts to eradicate the disease were stalling as funding dries up.

While AIDS-related deaths in Africa, the continent most affected by the epidemic, have plummeted this decade, Eastern Europe has seen the death toll rise 5 per cent and the Middle East and North Africa 9 per cent.

Year-on-year, those same regions saw a 29-per cent and 10-per cent rise in new infections, respectively.

Decades of research have yet to yield a cure or vaccine for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which has infected almost 80 million people and killed more than 35 million since the early 1980s.

More than half of all new HIV infections in 2018 were among sex workers, drug users, men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and the sexual partners of these groups, according to a report by UNAIDS. Many of those populations did not get access to infection prevention services, it said.

The report warned that a lack of political will coupled with decreasing finance risked undermining the progress made so far.

Last year $19 billion (17 billion euros) was made available for AIDS response, more than $7 billion short of the estimated $26.2 billion needed by 2020.