The global HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to demand urgent attention, despite significant progress in scaling up treatment over the last several years.  An estimated 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS today, and of the approximately 9.7 million in need of antiretroviral treatment (ART), roughly three million are receiving it. While this represents a ten-fold increase over the last six years, more than 6.7 million people are still in urgent need of treatment. Meanwhile, the virus continues to take its toll, particularly in developing countries, where 95% of those infected live. An estimated two million people died of AIDS in 2007, including 270 000 children.

Access to appropriate and adapted paediatric antiretrovirals (ARVs), as well as to newer and more potent ‘second-line’ ARVs, for people who have developed resistance, remains a major challenge, as does tackling transmission of the virus from expectant mothers to their babies – the primary cause of child infection.

UNITAID has made these challenges the focus of its HIV/AIDS effort, and together with its partners the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI), UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), UNITAID is helping address them in crucial ways, by:

• Increasing access to appropriate AIDS treatment for children and ensuring drug prices come down;
  
  
• Expanding access to second-line treatment and helping bring prices down through increased market competition; and
  
  
• Supporting the scale-up of Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) programmes.
  
  

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