Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam speaks at the UN General Assembly’s high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS on June 8, 2021 (Photo: VNA)

The Deputy Prime Minister shared Vietnam’s experience in combating HIV/AIDS and stressed the need to ensure enough resources, especially for developing countries, and secure the supply chain of drugs as a means of eradicating the deadly virus. It is therefore a matter of urgency to find a cure and develop a vaccine that is capable of preventing the disease, he told the UN gathering.

Deputy PM Dam also reiterated Vietnamese commitments, along with those made by the wider international community, that the world must work harder in order to achieve the 90-90-90 treatment target, whilst aiming even higher with targets in the future.

The world is now working toward meeting the UNAIDS Programme’s ambitious treatment target that will see 90% of all people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% diagnosed with HIV receive sustained antiretroviral therapy (ARV), and 90% receiving the ARV therapy have viral suppression.

According to UNAIDS, by the end of last year there were 37.6 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, of whom 27.4 million were receiving treatment, a figure more than three times the number recorded back in 2010. AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 43% over the past decade to 690,000 in 2020.