Devex: HIV treatment access isn’t rising fast enough to reach 2020 targets, UNAIDS report shows
“There has been ‘significant progress’ in expanding access to HIV treatment over the last decade, but testing and treatment gaps still place the goal of getting 30 million people on treatment by 2020 out of reach, according to new findings from UNAIDS. An estimated 24.5 million people of the 37.9 million living with HIV were accessing treatment as of mid-2019, more than double the number of HIV-positive people on treatment in 2010, according to the UNAIDS report, ‘Power to the People’…” (Lieberman, 11/29).

U.N. News: Empowering people living with HIV ‘will end the epidemic,’ says AIDS agency chief
“…Power to the people, released ahead of World AIDS Day on Sunday, illustrates that when people have the power to choose and work together, lives can be saved, injustices prevented, and dignity restored. ‘When people and communities have power and agency, change happens,’ said UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima. ‘The solidarity of women, young people, gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers, people who use drugs and transgender people, has transformed the AIDS epidemic — empowering them will end the epidemic’…” (11/26).

VOA: U.N.: More Than 300 Children Die Daily of AIDS-Related Causes
“…[T]his year, as World AIDS Day, the annual event to raise awareness of the global epidemic, turns 31, the United Nations Children’s Fund is warning that … children are dying at the rate of 320 per day around the world — and about half of them are not in treatment. Those are alarming statistics, because with early intervention and treatment HIV-positive patients can live long, healthy lives. Dr. Chewe Luo, who heads UNICEF’s HIV/AIDS section, says health care providers need to treat HIV as a family matter…” (Powell, 12/1).

Xinhua: Interview: Prevention remains challenge despite progress in fighting HIV: Global Fund chief
“Great progress has been made in the fight against HIV in the last decade, but preventing new infections is a significant challenge, Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) said. … ‘We are at a crucial stage in the fight against HIV,’ Sands told Xinhua days before the World AIDS Day, designated on Dec. 1 every year by WHO since 1988…” (Wang/Wang, 12/1).

Additional coverage of World AIDS Day, the UNAIDS report, and other AIDS-related news is available from AP, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, Hindustan Times, NBC, New York Times, Reuters, Science, Science Speaks, Scientific American, USA TODAY, and Xinhua.