GENEVA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- While globally AIDS-related deaths have almost halved during the past ten years and new HIV infections declined, though not fast enough, from 2010 to 2016, eastern Europe and central Asia remain the only regions in the world where new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths are both rising, the Joint UN Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) warned on Thursday.
In a latest report on global efforts of fighting HIV/AIDS published Thursday, UNAIDS said that despite a great progress achieved in fighting HIV/AIDS worldwide since 2005, eastern Europe and central Asia still saw new HIV infections increased from 120,000 in 2010 to 190,000 in 2016, 42 percent of which were infected when injecting drugs.
The anti-AIDS progress has been poor in the Middle East and North Africa too, where AIDS-related deaths have risen by 48 percent during the same period. Just over half of people living with HIV in this region knew their HIV status, with less than half of those on HIV treatment. Only one out of five people living with HIV was virally suppressed.
The situation in the Middle East and North Africa and in eastern Europe and central Asia is uninspiring, especially given that AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since 2005 and more than half of all people worldwide living with HIV now have access to HIV treatment.
In 2016, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV had access to treatment, and AIDS-related deaths have fallen from 1.9 million in 2005 to one million in 2016, according to the report.
In another development, in a report also released Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) sounds the alarm over another issue -- the increasing trend of resistance to HIV drugs. It says that in six of the 11 countries surveyed in Africa, Asia and Latin America, over 10 percent of people starting anti-retroviral therapy had a strain of HIV that was resistant to some of the most widely used HIV medicines.
HIV drug resistance develops when people do not adhere to a prescribed treatment plan, often because they do not have consistent access to quality HIV treatment and care. Such drug resistance could fail therapy and may also transmit drug-resistant viruses to others.
"Antimicrobial drug resistance is a growing challenge to global health and sustainable development," said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "We need to proactively address the rising levels of resistance to HIV drugs if we are to achieve the global target of ending AIDS by 2030."
