The Internatinal AIDS Society, IAS, has commended governments, civil society and United Nations, UN, agencies for the significant progress on universal access to antiretroviral drugs, ARVs. By the end of 2007, over 30 per cent of people in need of ARVs, an estimated three million people, were on antiretroviral therapy, ART, in low and middle-income countries, a 42 per cent increase over the figure at the end of 2006. Encouraging progress was also reported in preventing mother to child transmissiom, PMTCT, of the human immunodeficiency virus, Hiv, with 34 per cent of Hiv-positive pregnant woman receiving ARVs for PMTCT at the end of 2007 compared to 14 per cent only two years before. Although these trends are encouraging, they must be balanced against the realty that more than two-third of people in need of ART are not on treatment, and in 2007 the number of new HIV infections was 2.5 times higher than the increase in the number of people on ART.
Pedro Cahn, president, IAS, warned that, while progress over the last few years has been substantial, the international community must redouble its efforts in order to achieve universal access to prevention, care and treatment by 2010 and the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs 6, to stop the reversal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis epidemics by 2015. ” While we are encouraged by the high level of government representation at the recent UN meetin on AIDS and the fact that 147 member states submitted progress reports on their 2001 and 2006 commmitments most countries are far off target to meet universal access goals by 2010 or MDG 6 by 2015. Their commitment has yet to fully translate into action on the frontlines of this epidemic”, he said.
Cahn urged leaders to scale up prevention efforts, and to include ART as part of a comprehensive approach to HIV prevention.” We know that viral suppression through the use of ART reduces the risk of transmission; it is another forceful argument for governments to accelerate the pace of treatment scale-up