NEW YORK/GENEVA, 24 September 2015—As world leaders gather in New York to commit to the Sustainable Development Goals, including ambitious public health targets, UNAIDS has called on governments and the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that medicines remain accessible to all.
Dramatic increases in the prices of some medicines are raising concerns about their continued availability to patients as well as about the wider effects on public health.
“As world leaders commit to new public health targets as part of the Sustainable Development Goals, governments and the private sector have a responsibility to ensure that medicines remain accessible to everybody,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé. “The AIDS response is proof that access to affordable and effective medicines can halt and reverse an epidemic.”
Generic competition in the pharmaceutical industry, fostered by the use of intellectual property flexibilities, has helped make prices for life-saving medicines much more affordable over the past 15 years and allowed the massive scale-up of HIV treatment programmes. More than 15 million people are today accessing life-saving antiretroviral medicines, compared with fewer than 700 000 people in 2000.
UNAIDS has set a new 90–90–90 treatment target for 2020 with the aim of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Countries around the world are adopting the 90–90–90 treatment target, whereby 90% of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% of people who know their HIV status are accessing treatment and 90% of people on treatment have suppressed viral loads.
“Everyone has the right to health, no matter where they are born or who they are,” added Mr Sidibé.
UNAIDS
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
