Baku. 15 July. REPORT.AZ/ The world has made "extraordinary progress" against AIDS, slashing the rate of new infections by more than a third and saving nearly 8 million lives since 2000, Report informs a new report of UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) declares.
According to the report, fifteen years of work to make sure more people get drugs that can keep them healthy and keep them from infecting others has had spectacular effects on the pandemic that has killed nearly 40 million people, the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS says in its report.
Distribution of condoms has averted around 50 million new HIV infections since the HIV pandemic started in the 1980s, and other programs to educate people about how HIV spreads and to encourage safe sex have helped, also.
"The world has delivered on halting and reversing the AIDS epidemic", said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Nonetheless, 36.9 million people are still infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, UNAIDS says. There's still no vaccine to prevent it and there is still no cure. Two million people are infected every year and more than a million die of AIDS.
But the report celebrates what has been achieved since 2000. For instance, 15 million people are on the drugs that can suppress the virus, called antiretroviral therapy.
"New HIV infections have fallen by 35 percent and AIDS-related deaths by 41 percent," UNAIDS says in a report.