Clinton, announcing the next stage of the decade-long US fight against AIDS around the world, said advances in drug treatment and prevention strategies had brought the end of the epidemic within reach.
The PEPFAR program, launched by former President George W. Bush in 2003, has been a catalyst for advancing HIV treatment, particularly in Africa. It now supports some 5.1 million people worldwide who are receiving anti-retroviral drugs.
The UN AIDS program said this month that ending the pandemic was now “entirely feasible” as it released an annual report showing that both deaths from AIDS and new infections with the HIV virus that causes it were falling.
Worldwide some 34 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2011, the UNAIDS report said. Deaths from AIDS fell to 1.7 million in 2011, down from a peak of 2.3 million in 2005 and from 1.8 million in 2010.
The number of people newly infected with HIV, which can be transmitted via blood and by semen during sex, is also falling. At 2.5 million, the number of new infections in 2011 was 20 percent lower than in 2001.
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Park Sae-jin
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