Nearly 40 million people were living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS last year, over 9 million weren’t getting any treatment, and the result was that every minute someone died of AIDS-related causes, the U.N. says in a new report. While advances are being made to end the global AIDS pandemic, progress has slowed, funding is shrinking, and new infections are rising in three regions: the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America. In 2023, around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses, a significant decline from the 2.1 million deaths in 2004 but the target for 2025 is fewer than 250,000 deaths, according to the report launched Monday by UNAIDS, the U.N. agency working to end the pandemic.
