HIV/AIDS in the People's Republic of China

HIV/AIDS imposes enormous economic, social, health, and human costs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The challenge is particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds (22.5 million) of the people living with HIV/AIDS globally, and where HIV/AIDS has become the leading cause of premature death. But now, after decades of misery and frustration with the disease, there are signs of hope. HIV prevalence rates in Africa are stabilizing. This book sheds light on these concerns by analyzing the fiscal implications of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, the epicenter of the epidemic. It uses the toolbox of public finance to assess the sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs.

"Mercy" is a short film created by Unicef and Mac Aids Fund that overviews the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV services in rural South Africa. The viewer is taken through the experience of a young women who visits a clinic for a pregnancy test and finds out she is HIV+.

The Community based systems in HIV treatment (CoBaSys) programme aims to understand and support conditions for community empowerment in services providing treatment for people living with HIV in east and southern Africa (ESA). A community system for health is understood to be the sum of the organizations, local government structures, civil society organizations, institutions and resources whose primary purpose is to improve health at community and primary care level.

This report was prepared by the UNAIDS Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work to complement the UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work (2009). The Advisory Group includes representatives of organisations affiliated with the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, independent experts from academia and civil society organisations, representatives of UNAIDS Co-Sponsors and the Secretariat. The Advisory Group was constituted in 2009 by the Executive Director of UNAIDS to provide advice and guidance to UNAIDS on matters related to HIV and sex work, while paying particular attention to the human rights of female, male, and transgender sex workers and the goal of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for sex workers.

The Progress report 2011: Global HIV/AIDS response reviews progress made until the end of 2010 in scaling up access to health sector interventions for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in low–and middle-income countries.

It is the fifth in a series of annual progress reports published since 2006 by WHO, UNICEF and UNAIDS, in collaboration with national and international partners, to monitor key components of the health sector response to the HIV epidemic.

This year's report lays out a three-part, science-based agenda for ending the AIDS epidemic in our lifetimes and synthesizes the actions needed across the spectrum of existing, emerging and long-term biomedical HIV prevention tools that could change the AIDS response forever. As you will see, we have tried to capture the need to deliver, demonstrate and develop (and combine) across a range of prevention options.

This discussion paper summarizes the approach to HIV prevention programming known as “combination prevention” that UNAIDS recommends to achieve the greatest and most lasting impact on reducing HIV incidence and on improving the well-being of affected communities around the world.

A new report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has been released and shows that 2011 was a game changing year for the AIDS response with unprecedented progress in science, political leadership and results. The report also shows that new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths have fallen to the lowest levels since the peak of the epidemic. New HIV infections were reduced by 21% since 1997, and deaths from AIDS-related illnesses decreased by 21% since 2005.

In order to help countries produce standardized reports to effectively measure the state of the epidemic, UNAIDS has released the new guidelines on Global AIDS Response Progress Reporting 2012. The guidelines outline a set of core global indicators designed to help countries assess the current state of their national AIDS response and progress made in achieving their national HIV targets. They will contribute to a better understanding of the global AIDS response, including progress towards meeting the global targets set in the 2011 Political Declaration as well as the Millennium Development Goals.

There has been considerable progress across the world in responding to HIV and AIDS. Yet, the number of people newly infected with HIV continues to rise in many countries, and AIDS is still a leading cause of adult mortality. Treatment has become more widely available, but the costs for individuals and countries remain signifi cant, and the sustainability of treatment is a serious concern.