UNAIDS: Commitment to end inequality essential to ending HIV epidemic
Last week saw the United Nations (UN) General Assembly High-Level Meeting (HLM) on HIV and AIDS. World leaders, UN directors, health experts and community advocates came together in New York to decide new goals, tasks and methods for fighting the ongoing HIV epidemic. A new global commitment was to “end the inequalities faced by communities and people affected by HIV.”
The HLM concluded that inequality fuels and stimulates the HIV epidemic, along with other diseases. Inequality must be combated with the correct policies, strategies and legislation if we’re to end AIDS by 2030 whilst at the same time increasing future pandemic preparedness.
Winnie Bianoma, Executive Director of UNAIDS said:
"During the pandemic - AIDS, COVID-19 and others - viruses fuel inequality. When we ignore inequality, the virus spreads in the shadows and we get flashes.”
“So, we have to ask: are young women seeing the same decline in the number of new infections as others? Are gay and transgender communities have the same suppression of the virus? Do the poor have access to the same technologies due to HIV and easy access to health care?
“In the past, the United Nations has not paid due attention to inequality. We're taking another course. From now on, we will measure success by how quickly inequality is decreasing. Leaders really don't have much choice: you can either fight inequality or fail in the fight against AIDS.”
At the HLM world leaders agreed to:
- Reduce the annual number of new HIV infections to 370,000 by 2025
- Reduce the number of AIDS deaths to 250,000
- Eliminate new cases of HIV transmission among children
- Put an end to paediatric AIDS
- Eliminate all forms of HIV-related discrimination
The leaders also committed themselves to providing life-saving treatment to 34 million people by 2025.
Read more on the UNAIDS website: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2021/june/20210610_hlm-panel1
