To Win Combat Against HIV Worldwide, Knowledge Is Power, Says UNAIDS Report

If we know more about HIV, we can control it easily. Ahead of World AIDS Day, marked every year on 1 December, the United Nations issued a report on Thursday that highlights the critical importance of scaling up HIV testing worldwide. Titled Knowledge is Power, it presents evidence on progress made against AIDS thanks to early detection and treatment and calls on countries to step up their efforts. “To reach the millions who do not know their status, we need universal access to HIV testing services.

HIV testing should be as widely available as pregnancy testing,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS, the coalition of 11 UN agencies established in 1994 to tackle i-the global AIDS epidemic. Recent years have seen some successes in the battle against HIV/AIDS. In 2017, 75 per cent of people living with the virus knew their status, up from 66 per cent in 2015. Encouragingly, at…