Geneva – Unitaid welcomes the announcement by UNAIDS that for the first time, more than half of all people living with HIV have access to lifesaving treatment, and that AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since 2005.

UNAIDS said the new figures reflect a “tipping point” in the fight against the epidemic and noted that with a sustained scale-up in effort, the global health community is on track to reach the target of having 30 million people on treatment by 2020.

The Global Fund has published new results this week showing an increase of nearly one-fifth in the number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy through Global Fund-supported programmes.

“The results published by UNAIDS are highly positive, showing that 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV now have access to treatment,” said Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora. “However, the pace of innovation has to accelerate if we are to meet ambitious global goals and close the gap.”

Success brings new challenges. For example, with fewer children becoming infected, innovative strategies are needed to find and treat the ones who are being left behind.

To that end, Unitaid is funding $149.3 million in projects to bring state-of-the-art point-of-care diagnostics to promptly learn the HIV status of infants in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

For adults and adolescents, the HIV Self-Testing Africa (STAR) initiative, funded by Unitaid, is expanding into the largest effort to date to create a thriving market for HIV self-testing in Africa. The initiative has produced evidence that more people learn their HIV status when they can test themselves in private.

In addition, there is a growing need for more robust, simpler treatment regimes to allow HIV treatment to be maintained over a lifetime.

With that goal in mind, Unitaid and the Government of Kenya in June announced the introduction of dolutegravir, a less-toxic, easy-to-take drug for people living with HIV, making Kenya the first African country to introduce the generic version of this new drug for routine use.