World AIDS Day - December 1, 2015

 
December 1, 2015 is World AIDS Day
Image:  Original Print by Alex Halvorsen available from Art for AIDS @ http://www.artforaidsinternational.org/product/alex-halvorsen-3/
 
The World Health Organization (WHO) released its most recent report on the HIV/AIDS pandemic on November 27, 2015 called:  Global Health Sector Response to HIV 2000 - 2015: Focus on Innovations in Africa.  The report's executive summary can be downloaded from the homepage or by going to: http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/progressreports/2015-progress-report/en/ .  This executive summary highlights key facts from the progress report on the Global health sector response to HIV, 2000-2015. Successful HIV responses are not yet universal, but they are common enough to have made a huge impact in the past 15 years.
  • The number of adults and children newly infected with HIV globally declined by 35% in 2000–2014.
  • The number of people dying from HIV-related causes declined by 24% in 2000–2014 and by over 40% since 2004, the peak year.
  • HIV treatment reached almost 16 million people in mid-2015 – more than 11 million of them in the African Region, where only about 11 000 people had been receiving treatment in 2000.
  • Millennium Development Goal 6, which called for halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV by 2015, was achieved, and the HIV response contributed to significantly reducing child mortality (Millennium Development Goal 4) and maternal mortality (Millennium Development Goal 5).