The Caribbean experienced the highest decline in Aids-related deaths of any region between 2005 and 2011, a global report from UNAids for 2012 has said. It said the number of children born with HIV declined significantly by some 32 per cent in the Caribbean from 2009 to 2011.
"The number of people (adults and children) acquiring HIV infection in 2011 was 20 per cent lower than in 2001. The sharpest declines in the numbers of people acquiring HIV infection since 2001 have occurred in the Caribbean (42 per cent) and sub-Saharan Africa (25 per cent)," the report said.
Aggressive efforts by governments worldwide to combat the disease by pumping more money into research and making drugs more available have also led to reduction in Aids-related death, the report said. The number of people dying from Aids-related causes began to decline in the mid-2000s because of scaled-up antiretroviral therapy and the steady decline in HIV incidence since the peak in 1997, the report said.
This decline continued in 2011, with evidence that the drop in the number of people dying from Aids-related causes was accelerating in several countries. "In 2011, 1.7 million people died from Aids-related causes worldwide. This represents a 24 per cent decline in Aids-related mortality compared with 2005, when 2.3 million deaths occurred.
"The Caribbean (48 per cent) and Oceania (41 per cent) experienced significant declines in Aids-related deaths between 2005 and 2011," the report said. Eastern Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, however, experienced significant increases in mortality from Aids, the report said.
The scaling up of antiretroviral therapy in low and middle-income countries, it added, has transformed national Aids responses and generated broad-based health gains. "Since 1995, antiretroviral therapy has saved 14 million life-years in low and middle-income countries, including nine million in sub-Saharan Africa," the report added.
Getting to zero new HIV infections, however, will require substantial reductions each year. In sexual HIV transmission, which accounted for the overwhelming majority of the people who were newly infected.
"Although there is reason for optimism, including favourable trends in sexual behaviour in many countries and the additive impact of new biomedical prevention strategies, the current pace of progress is insufficient to reach the global goal of halving sexual transmission by 2015, underscoring the urgent need for intensified action," the report said.
