Posted on August 09, 2016
Source: The World Bank
"The recent Durban 2016 International AIDS Conference celebrates the success of AIDS treatment in reducing illness and death. The pall of despair and wasting death that hung over the Durban 2000 International AIDS Conference has truly been lifted. In KwaZulu-Natal, where the conference was held, AIDS treatment has increased community life expectancy by a full 11 years, reversing decades of decline -- life expectancy in KwaZulu-Natal is higher today than before the HIV epidemic. This is indubitably one of the great successes of global health.
However, the horizon is darkening, as the gathering storm grows starker. Unless we balance our celebration of the success of AIDS treatment with a sober appraisal of and rejoinder to these threats, we risk a reversal of painstaking gains."