UNAIDS: 2011 Game Changing Year

November 21, 2011

Nandi Makhele, 25, poses for a portrait while wearing a T-shirt indicating that she is HIV-positive, in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township February 15, 2010. Some 5.6 million people live with HIV/AIDS in South Africa - more than in any other country.

The new report from UNAIDS says 2011 brought unprecedented progress in science, political leadership and results. It says despite the financial crisis, greater access to HIV treatment had a dramatic effect on the lives of millions of people.

The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS calls 2011 a “game changing year.” Its new report is called

How to get to Zero: Faster, Smarter, Better

. It says both HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths “have fallen to the lowest levels since the peak of the epidemic.”

“Faster, smarter, better reflects our desire for reducing the HIV epidemic and also reducing to the maximum possible the damage that it is doing. We build on the success stories that we pick up from different places in the world to show those as examples so that other countries could follow them,” said Peter Ghys is UNAIDS chief epidemiologist.

The UNAIDS report says new infections are down 21 percent since 1997 and AIDS-related deaths have fallen 21 percent since 2005.

Several reasons for the decline

“Close to half of all people who need treatment are currently accessing that treatment. So this comes to about 6.6 million people. Some of the same drugs are also use to reduce mother to child transmission. So that’s another area where we are seeing favorable trends,” said Ghys.