Ending the aids epidemic among young people
In the Middle East and North Africa
Highlights
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of only two regions in the world with rising numbers of people acquiring HIV. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that about 20,000 people acquired HIV in the MENA region in 2022, a 54 percent increase since 2010. This is the steepest rise in annual new HIV infections in the world. Almost 20 percent of new infections were in young people, aged 15–24 years.
These trends are occurring against a backdrop of instability, including armed conflict and forced displacement, which is undermining governance, damaging public infrastructure, and disrupting public health and other essential services.
Yet, with an overall HIV burden that is still comparatively low, MENA also has a big opportunity to become the first region to end AIDS as a public health threat. Doing so will require HIV strategies that actually reach the people who are most affected by the epidemic. At the moment, across most of the region, services that can prevent new HIV infections are either lacking or are missing most of the people who are most at risk. Many of them are young people who are struggling with multiple challenges and hardships.
Vulnerable, marginalized populations bear the brunt of the HIV epidemic in the MENA region and account for the majority of new HIV infections.
Not only are most countries in the region failing to prevent rising numbers of new HIV infections, but about half the people living with HIV are not getting the treatment and support they need to stay alive and healthy. United Nations Member States have committed to ensuring that at least 95 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive treatment and that 95 percent of those on treatment reduce their HIV viral loads to levels that make it impossible for them to transmit the virus to others. The MENA region is a long way from achieving those targets. In 2022, only 67 percent of people aged 15 years and older with HIV knew that they had acquired the virus, 50 percent were receiving life-saving treatment, and 45 percent were able to reduce their viral loads to levels that no longer pose a threat to their health. As a result, there has been a comparatively slow decline in AIDS-related deaths among people aged 15 years and older: a 19 percent decrease in MENA between 2010 and 2022, compared with 46 percent globally.
Very little attention is being paid to the young people affected by this epidemic, who, in the absence of support and services, risk acquiring HIV and transmitting it to others.
Consequently, the region’s HIV programmes keep losing ground against the epidemic – at a time when almost all other regions are markedly reducing the numbers of people acquiring HIV and succumbing to AIDS-related illnesses each year.
