Juveniles with HIV/AIDS being treated at outpatient clinic in Children's Hospital No.1 in HCM City. — VNA/VNS Photo Đinh Hằng

NEW YORK — It is necessary to speed up efforts to put an end to the AIDS pandemic in 2030, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minster Vũ Đức Đam told a United Nations (UN) General Assembly high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS on Tuesday.

Addressing the event held virtually, the Deputy PM stressed the need to ensure sufficient resources for HIV/AIDS response, especially for developing nations, non-disruptive supply of antiretrovirals and accelerate the development of HIV vaccines and cure medicines.  

Đam reiterated Việt Nam’s commitment to achieve the 90-90-90 target (90 per cent of all people living with HIV know their disease status, 90 per cent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection receive sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 90 per cent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression), stressing that to reach the upcoming 95-95-95 goal, the world needs 100-100-100 effort, and even more.

At the meeting, President of the UN General Assembly Volkan Bozkir, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed, and UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima praised the active engagement of member countries in coping with HIV/AIDS over the years.

Bozkir described AIDS as an epidemic of inequalities.  To end AIDS by 2030, he called for an end to inequalities.  

Ending the disease is both a prerequisite for — and a result of — implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, he stressed.

According to UNAIDS, 37.6 million people across the globe were living with HIV in 2020, including 27.4 million people accessing antiretroviral therapy, more than three times higher than that in 2010, at 7.8 million.

The number of people died from AIDS-related illnesses fell 43 per cent in 2020 to 690,000. — VNS