Global AIDS response will miss 2015 targets, ONE report suggests

"The world has lost momentum in the fight against the AIDS epidemic, with millions of new people infected last year, the ONE foundation said in a report," titled "The Beginning of the End? Tracking Global Commitments on AIDS" and released on Tuesday, Reuters reports. In its annual report last week, UNAIDS said despite advances in access to medicines that both treat and prevent HIV infection, 2.5 million new cases of HIV occurred in 2011, according to the news service. "That is more than double the target of having only 1.1 million people newly infected each year, said ONE," according to Reuters.

The ONE report "shows that although significant progress has been made, if we maintain the status quo on treatment and prevention, we won't see the beginning of the end of AIDS until 2022," Erin Hohlfelder, ONE's policy director for global health, writes in an article on the organization's webpage. "In 2013, global leaders will also discuss a new post-2015 global development framework," she states, adding, "Without scaled-up financing, more targeted programming and expanded political will, the beginning of the end of AIDS will remain a distant ambition" (11/27). "The ONE report examined funding for AIDS from the Group of Seven major developed countries, as well as the political leadership and strategy," Reuters writes, noting its release "comes ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1" (11/27).