Widespread access to antiretrovirals, as well as to HIV prevention

Widespread access to antiretrovirals, as well as to HIV prevention, care and support, remains a major global health and human rights emergency for millions in need. Nonetheless, the numbers of those having such access is rising. In this regard, governments and the international community made commitments in 2006 to pursue all necessary efforts towards achieving the goalof universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention programmes, treatment, care and support by 2010. Other time-bound com-mitments (including on human rights relating to HIV), have been made during the decade in the Millennium Declaration, and in the Declaration of Commitment adopted by the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in 2001 and confirmed and expanded by the Political Declaration of the 2006 High Level Meeting on AIDS at the General Assembly. These commitments reflect what works in the response to HIV, as well as much greater political commitment to the response. Global funding for HIV programmes has risen almost 30-fold in the course of the decade.
Nevertheless, the situation remains grave, with a doubling of people living with HIV worldwide to over 40 million, with women now comprising half of those living with HIV, with young people, particularly young women, having the fastest rates of infection, and with some 14 million children having been orphaned by AIDS। HIV prevalence has grown among those groups in society most marginalized, such as sex workers, drug users and men having sex with men. Coverage of interventions to educate people about HIV; to provide them with HIV prevention commodities, services and treatment; to protect them from discrimination and sexual violence; and to empower them to participate in the response and live successfully in a world with HIV is unacceptably low in many places in the world.