Today is World AIDS Day – a day when the global community takes a hard look at the AIDS pandemic and our progress in defeating it. The United Nations said 2011 was a “game changing year” for the AIDS response (source).
The good news is that fewer people are dying from HIV than ever before, meaning more are able to “live positively” with the virus for many years. In fact, nearly half of all people eligible for lifesaving antiretroviral therapy in poorer countries now have access to it (source).
“We’ve never had a year when there has been so much science, so much leadership and such results in one year,” said Michel Sidibe, director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (source).
UNAIDS also cites great progress in preventing the spread of AIDS, and many of the strategies praised are strategies FH employs, like voluntary medical male circumcision and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission.
Still, the World Health Organization warns that a funding crisis may risk the progress we’ve seen in recent years.
Get involved, and help! You can be directly involved in this exciting, lifesaving work by giving $9 a month through Poverty 180′s HIV/AIDS cause!
