United Nations, New York, USA, December 01 2014 – Simon Bland, Director of the New York Office of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), briefs journalists on the occasion of World AIDS Day (1 December). Marking the Day, UNAIDS released a report on HIV in cities, outlining the important role that urban areas will play in ending the epidemic.
On the Photo: Simon Bland
Credit: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire
Speaking in a press conference in New York, the UNAIDS Director of the New York office Simon Bland stressed
“We set a stage for us to end AIDS by 2030. When we say ending AIDS, we are saying that it will not just disappear from the world. What we know is that it will cease to be a public issue and it will be treated as a chronic illness.”
“What we want to achieve by 2020 is to have 500,000 people new infections only compare to 2.1 [million] infections currently, and then moving on to 2030, by the 200,000.”
“Children continue to be not as much as we would like to be, but I think it’s increasing as countries put paediatric programmes in place. This has always been a challenge both –programmatically- as well as in terms of finding pediatric antiretroviral treatment regimes for children in many countries across the world.”
“Stigma and discrimination is clearly is a huge obstacle for us the enabling environment, the people that we talk about the most difficult to reach are men having sex with men, people who inject drugs, sex workers; these have been the most difficult people to work with because of the stigma and discrimination they face.”
“As of 2013, we estimated that we have 35 million people, who live with HIV globally, we continue to have 2.1 million people who became newly infected last year, and we have 1.5 million people who died of AIDS related cases in 2013. But we are also happy to announce that we have by June 2014 we have 13.6 million people who have access to antiretroviral and we are on track to meet our target of 15 million by 2015.”
Also today, UNADIS released a report on HIV in cities, outlining the important role that urban areas will play in ending the epidemic. Some 200 cities around the world account for more than a quarter of the 35 million people living with HIV.
Mayors from around the world gathered in Paris to sign the 2014 Paris Declaration to end AIDS in their cities by 2030. They committed to putting their cities on the Fast-Track – an initiative which focuses on accelerating HIV prevention and treatment.
Source: UNTV and EuropaNewswire