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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | UNAIDS welcomes new initiatives taken at New York high-level meet by Aarti Dhar

UNAIDS welcomes new initiatives taken at New York high-level meet by Aarti Dhar

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published Published on Jun 12, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 12, 2011

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has welcomed the new targets set by world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS held in New York. Countries agreed to advance efforts towards reducing sexual transmission of HIV and halving by 2015 HIV infection among people who inject drugs.

They also agreed to push towards eliminating new HIV infections among children in the next five years. Leaders pledged to increase the number of people on life-saving treatment to 15 million and reduce tuberculosis-related deaths in people living with HIV by half in the same time period.

The targets come at a time when international assistance for the AIDS programme has dropped for the first time since 2001. Member-States agreed to increase AIDS-related spending by 2015 to reach between $ 22 billion and $ 24 billion in low-and middle-income countries.

These far-reaching goals are set in the Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS: Intensifying our Efforts to eliminate HIV/AIDS, adopted by the General Assembly on June 10.

The declaration notes that the HIV prevention strategies inadequately focus on populations at higher risk — specifically men who have sex with men, sex workers and people who inject drugs, and calls on countries to focus their response based on epidemiological and national contexts.

“These are concrete and real targets that will bring hope to the 34 million people living with HIV and their families,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “Through shared responsibility, the world must invest sufficiently today, so we will not have to pay forever.”

The declaration calls on all U.N. Member-States to redouble their efforts to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2015 as a critical step towards ending the global AIDS epidemic. A pledge to eliminate gender inequality, gender-based abuse and violence, and to increase the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from HIV infection was also made.

The declaration recognises that access to sexual and reproductive health has been and continues to be essential to the AIDS response and that governments have the responsibility of providing public health services focused on the needs of families, particularly women and children. Member-States also agreed to review laws and policies that adversely impact on the successful, effective and equitable delivery of the HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programmes to people living with and affected by HIV.

With reports of nearly 7,000 new HIV infections each day, the declaration reaffirms that preventing HIV must be the cornerstone of national, regional and international responses to the AIDS epidemic. It calls for expanding access to essential HIV prevention commodities, particularly male/female condoms and sterile injecting equipment. Calling for intensifying national HIV testing campaigns; it urges countries to deploy new bio-medical interventions as soon as they are validated, including earlier access to treatment, as prevention.

The Hindu, 12 June, 2011, http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/12/stories/2011061256131200.htm


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