HIV infections increase at ‘worrying’ 2.5 million a year

Here is the bad news: The ambitious target to end AIDS by 2030 seems like a distant dream, if figures are to be believed. According to a new research, while the global number of new cases continue to decline, the pace has greatly slowed.

Globally, new infections have fallen by only an average of 0.7 per cent per year between 2005 and 2015, compared to the 2.7 per cent drop per year between 1997 and 2005. The good news is that AIDS deaths are falling in most countries worldwide.

In total, approximately 1.2 million people died from HIV in 2015, down from a peak of 1.8 million in 2005.

As per the research from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) over the past 10 years, rates of new HIV infections have increased between 2005-2015 in 74 countries, including Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mexico and Russia. Published in the reputed journal, The Lancet HIV, the new research was released at the International AIDS Conference in Durban on Tuesday.

The study is based on findings from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Experts estimate that 38·8 million people were living with HIV in 2015, an increase of almost 10 million compared with the GBD 2013 estimate of 29·2 million.

The investigators also estimate that 2·5 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2015, an increase of 40 per cent compared with the 2013 estimate of 1·8 million.

“If this trend of stubbornly high new infections continues, there will be significant challenges in meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal for the world to witness the end of AIDS in less than 15 years,” said IHME Director Dr Christopher Murray. “Everyone in population health needs to understand that even if more people are living with HIV, we cannot end AIDS without stopping new infections.”

Associate Professor Dr Haidong Wang, the lead author on the study said that even with the improvements, success is still far away from the ambitious 90-90-90 goals set by the global community for the year 2020.

Those goals aim for 90 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status.