HIV/AIDS: complacency risks reversing progress on ending epidemic, conference hears

Complacency about HIV/AIDS and reduced funding risk rolling back advances towards ending the global epidemic, an international conference in Amsterdam has heard.

Last year almost a million people worldwide died from conditions related to AIDS and, of the 37 million infected with HIV, only 22 million have access to treatment.

“Too many people don’t get care,” the World Health Organization’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told the AIDS 2018 conference. “We will not meet our targets,” he warned, calling for universal health coverage to include HIV prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

“We must fight discrimination,” he said, listing populations at particular risk of HIV infection that lack access to effective healthcare because of stigmatisation and criminalisation: men who have sex with men, sex workers, injecting drug users, prisoners, transgender people, migrants, and refugees. “It’s unacceptable,” he said.

The …