According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS or UNAIDS, a cure for the epidemic is still farther down the line. However, the organization is working toward a milestone in raising awareness on HIV infection in the year 2020.
The world recently welcomed World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 in order to raise awareness about the infection. Several people contributed by greeting the event and paying respect to the people who lost their lives to AIDS.
During a conference last Friday, director of the UNAIDS office in New York Simon Bland described the event as "a remarkable story of progress, but unfinished progress." Bland also explained during the conference that their entity is working to minimize the number of new infections in 2020 by 500,000. "We certainly want quantitative targets, but quantitative targets including less than 500,000 new infections by 2020 in combating HIV, which an estimated 36.7 million people live with globally."
Nigeria is also making progress in its battle against HIV as President Muhammadu Buhari approved the patent application to produce more Nigerian antiretroviral drug to cure HIV. The drug was developed by Professor Maduike Ezeibe from the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture.
Africa in general also made big leaps in 2017. After new reports released by the World Health Organization, it was revealed that HIV/AIDS is not the leading cause of death among Africans. The leading cause of death is reported to be lower respiratory tract infection and had already claimed over 1 million lives. HIV/AIDS came in second with over 760,000 deaths.
According to HIV.gov, over 36.7 million people worldwide are infected at the end of 2016. Over 2.1 million of those individuals are children. One million people lost their lives to AIDS-related illnesses in 2016. Over 1.8 million people were infected by the virus in 2016.
