Some progress in arresting march of HIV, reveals new book

A new book Getting to Zero: Global Social Work Responds to HIV provides an unprecedented international snapshot of the HIV/AIDS situation, covering Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mozambique, Scotland, South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Ukraine, United States and Zimbabwe, across 18 chapters. It was released on Tuesday at the UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva. With 2030 fast approaching, the goal of ending the world HIV/AIDS epidemic is an ambitious one. Now, a new joint publication from the International Association of Schools and Social Work (IASSW) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), gives renewed global focus to the getting to zero strategy.

Mumbaikar Vimla Nadkarni, ex-president of the IASSW, was instrumental in working with UNAIDS to push forward the idea of a book that “comprehensively looks at the global social work response to HIV and the challenges it poses, especially from a community and gender perspective.” Given her considerable work in the area of research into HIV/AIDS, she was able to liasion and put the collaboration in place.

Associate Professor Mark Henrickson, from Massey University’s School of Social Work in Auckland, New Zealand, served as editor-in-chief on the publication, and worked together with a team of regional editors. These include: Vincent Lynch (North America), Hernando Muñoz Sanchez (Latin America and Caribbean), Vimla Nadkarni (Asia), Tetyana Semigina (Europe) and Vishanthie Sewpaul (Africa and Middle East).

Dr Henrickson says it is clear HIV is more than a medical condition. “HIV occurs in psychosocial, political and economic contexts that directly shape individual, community and government responses to HIV. Now that new medications have made HIV a manageable, lifelong condition, making those medications available, and assisting individuals and communities to access antiretroviral treatments and prevention technologies is an urgent undertaking. What this book demonstrates is how social workers around the world are taking up that challenge creatively and compassionately.”

When the editors first put out a call for contributions, they received responses from 68 individuals and partnerships from around the globe, he says. “The editorial challenge was to identify the work that best represents social work responses to HIV, and that would be most useful to social workers who work with people and communities affected by HIV. Each chapter’s abstract appears in the five languages of IASSW - English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and French - German, Portuguese and Ukrainian are also included.”

The chapters are organised into four groups, following the UNAIDS ‘Getting to Zero’ themes, like Zero new HIV infections, Zero discrimination, Zero AIDS-related deaths. The fourth group includes examples of trans-thinking that is so common among social workers, meaning responses are not limited to a particular zero-theme, or country or level of engagement.

Key facts and statistics

Guided by UNAIDS’ vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths, the world has achieved tremendous progress against HIV over the last 15 years, inspiring a global commitment to end the epidemic by 2030. The United Nations General Assembly agreed in June 2016 that ending the HIV epidemic by 2030 requires a fast-track response to reach three milestones by 2020. These include: reducing AIDS-related deaths to fewer than 5,00,000 globally by 2020, reducing new HIV infections to fewer than 5,00,000 globally by 2020 and elimination of HIV-related stigma and discrimination by 2020

Nadkarni pointed out how there has been a remarkable scaling-up of the 90-90-90 treatment target. “90% of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% of people who know their HIV-positive status are accessing treatment and 90% of people on treatment have suppressed viral loads. This has put the world on track to reach the target on AIDS-related deaths. Intensive efforts to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV have achieved steep declines in the annual number of new infections among children, from 2,90,000 in 2010 to 1,50,000 in 2015."

However, the decline in new HIV infections among adults has slowed, threatening progress towards ending the AIDS epidemic. Since 2010, the annual number of new HIV infections among adults (15 years and older) has remained static at an estimated 1.9 million. Some countries have achieved declines of new HIV infections among adults of 50% or more over the last 10 years, many have not made measurable progress, while others are experiencing worrying increases in new HIV infections.

Global statistics in 2015

- 17 million people were accessing antiretroviral therapy
- 36.7 million people globally were living with HIV
- 2.1 million people became newly infected with HIV
- 1.1 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses
- 78 million people have become infected with HIV since the start of the epidemic
- 35 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the infection