Yesterday I was in a workshop on HIV in Muscat, Oman conducted by MOH. I came to know some new information on HIV and AIDS which I am going to share in a series of posts. One of the most important of them is “Although it is not curable, HIV infection is a treatable condition. With effective ART (anti-retroviral therapy) the disease process can be kept under control. A HIV infected person can lead normal life just like other person”.
Today, we are going to learn about the current global HIV status.

AIDS was first described in 1981 and the causative organism was identified as HIV (Human Immunodeficiency virus) in 1983. Since the beginning of HIV epidemic, more than 70 million people have been infected and globally around 35 million people have died due to HIV-related illness. According to the 2017 WHO statistics, globally, 36.9 million people are living with HIV. At the same year 940000 [670000-1300000] people died of HIV-related illness worldwide, despite the availability of effective treatment.

Estimated PLHIV(people living with HIV/AIDS) in various regions. Africa is mostly affected with 25.7 million. Within Africa, East and Southern part is mostly affected
Approximately 0.8% (0.6-0.9%) of adult population aged 15 years to 49 years is living with HIV. Surprisingly, 25% of these same people are not aware that they are carrying the virus. The WHO African region is most severely affected. Two third of the world population who are living with HIV are in African region. One in every 25 adults (4.1%) is living with HIV in this area.
HIV global prevalence.png

The above image (statistics of 2017) shows the prevalence of HIV among the adults aged between 15 -49 years of age. Global prevalence is 0.8% which highest prevalence of 4.1% in Africa. The lowest prevalence is in eastern Mediterranean countries.

It is the estimated number of people having HIV infection in various part of the world.

Despite of awareness, 1.8 million (1.4- 2.4 million) people were newly infected in 2017. It is less in comparison with previous years but not sufficient enough to the target of less than 500000 by 2020.
About 1.8 million of children below 15 years of age are living with HIV (in 2017). 180000 new infection were found in 2017 among the children of same age group and 110000 children died due to HIV-related illness in the same year.

HAART/ART

There are various combination of Anti-Retroviral therapy protocals are available but still a majority portion of HIV infected people are not getting the expected treatment.
Among the 36.9 million HIV infected people of the world only 21.7 million people received ART by the end of 2017 which is 59% of the total PLHIV(People Living with HIV/AIDS).

In the following picture we can see the percentage of PLHIV having access to the anti-retroviral therapy (ART)

PLHIV globally .jpg

Here is the global summary of HIV/AIDS

According to the 2017 statistics, the number of the infected women(18.6 million) are higher than infected men (16.8 million)

What is 90-90-90 strategy?

In 2014, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and partners launched the 90–90–90 targets/strategy. The key target was, by 2020, 90% of PLHIV will know their HIV status; among them 90% will be on treatment; of whom 90% will be virally suppressed.

But in 2017, the achievement was so far: