July 29, 2024
JAKARTA – Ending AIDS as a public health threat in the Asia-Pacific region by 2030 is achievable only if leaders take rigorous actions now to ensure necessary resources for HIV responses and human rights protection for everyone, reveals this year’s global AIDS update from UNAIDS.
The Urgency of Now: AIDS at A Crossroads report acknowledges the progress some countries have made in reducing HIV infections and AIDS cases, but also highlights the significant treatment gaps and stigma still faced by people living with HIV.
With a new HIV infection every 2 minutes, governments in Asia-Pacific countries must urgently invest in prevention programs and community-led initiatives, it suggests.
Asia-Pacific was home to 67 million people living with HIV in 2023, meaning it had the largest HIV epidemic in the world outside eastern and southern Africa, said Eamonn Murphy, UNAIDS director of regional support teams for Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
“To achieve the global prevention target, Asia and the Pacific, with its huge populations, will be absolutely critical,” Murphy said on Wednesday during the regional launch of the 2024 global AIDS update.
“But we must lift the game. We must do more, and do it faster,” he said.
The Asia-Pacific regions accounted for a quarter of new HIV infections in the world in 2023, with 300,000 new infections. Men having sex with men, drug users, sex workers and transgender people are among those at risk for HIV infection.
Progress to halt new infections have stalled since 2010, with the region seeing a decline in new infections of just 13 percent, one-third the 39 percent global average.
AIDS-related deaths in the Asia-Pacific last year had declined by half since 2010, although this was still considered far too high. This translated into 17 people dying from an AIDS-related illness every hour while nine youths aged between 15 and 24 lost their lives every day, outcomes that UNAIDS suggested were avoidable.
The 2024 estimates for the region indicate no significant change in the figures of both new infections and deaths between 2022 and 2023.
“This is a serious warning sign that momentum has been lost, and that more has to be done to serve the people that our prevention and treatment services are not yet reached,” Murphy said.
The report also found that six countries with increasing infections – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Laos, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines – also recorded growing death rates, while Indonesia, Mongolia and Pakistan also recorded an increase in AIDS-related deaths.
It also suggested that the “Undetectable = Untransmittable” (U=U) campaign had been a game changer in lower viral transmissions, even though it was largely unknown to policymakers, health workers and people living with HIV.
The concept means that a person living with HIV who is continuing their treatment and has an undetectable viral load cannot sexually transmit the virus.
The report highlights that most cases of transmission involve people who do not know they have HIV. In some cases, transmission occurs among people with diagnosed HIV but who are not on treatment and people who are on treatment but have not reached viral suppression.
Only 78 percent of people living with HIV globally were aware of their status in 2023, according to UNAIDS. Two-thirds of people with HIV were on antiretroviral treatment last year, with the remaining third not receiving the care and support they needed to stay healthy and prevent transmitting the virus to others.
In Indonesia, only 31 percent of people living with HIV were receiving treatment, higher than Pakistan (15 percent) but lower than the Philippines (43 percent) and Bangladesh (49 percent).
“We have a moral and a public health imperative to help people learn their status, provide testing, start them on treatment right away if they are positive, and to ensure that the treatment works completely and they’re able to access treatment throughout their lives,” Murphy said.
Funding shortfalls were a key factor impeding progress, said Harry Prabowo, program manager at the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (APN+) and a representative of the Seven Alliance consortium of people living with HIV in the region.
“We need to sustain and increase investment to ensure that no one is left behind in this fight,” said Harry, who called for renewed commitments to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
These efforts could include scaling up access to testing and treatment services, improving the services of HIV prevention programs for key populations and ensuring comprehensive and sustained funding to close the resource gap.
“We need to address stigma and discrimination, and we do this by addressing the legal and society barriers. This includes implementing the legal protections against discriminatory policies,” Cecilia Oh, program adviser of the HIV, Health and Development Group of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said on Wednesday.