South Korea vowed to fully cooperate with the global efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, stressing the importance of scaling up effective prevention programs and eliminating HIV-related discrimination.
“The Republic of Korea welcomes the ambitious goals to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030,” said Jung Ki-suck, the director of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a recent U.N. meeting.
“Ending the HIV and AIDS epidemic is a shared responsibility. We need global solidarity, commitment and investment to end the epidemic for good.”
The top health official participated in this year’s High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, a two-day annual event held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York last week.
The UNAIDS Fast-Track approach to end the AIDS epidemic has a set of time-bound targets. Of them is reducing the number of newly infected patients from 2.1 million in 2015 to fewer than 500,000 in 2020 and that of AIDS-related deaths from 1.1 million to fewer than 500,000 in the same time period.
The commitment also includes eliminating HIV-related discrimination and to ultimately end the epidemic by 2030.
According to UNAIDS, remarkable progress has been made in the response to HIV since the last U.N. general assembly meeting on the disease in 2011. As of 2015, 17 million people had access to antiretroviral drugs. During the same period, new HIV infections among children and AIDS-related deaths have been considerably reduced.
However, the agency stressed that too many individuals, especially young women, intravenous drug users, sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men as well as transgender people are still excluded from such improvements. According to Jung’s speech, more than 2 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2014 alone, while 1.2 million people died from AIDS or AIDS-related diseases. A UNAIDS report also showed that more than 5,000 young women acquired HIV every week, the vast majority in southern Africa, while AIDS-related illnesses remain the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age globally.
In South Korea, more than 90 percent of reported AIDS patients from 1985-2014 were male. This means female patients may not be seeking professional help or remain unaware of their HIV infection. Throughout the 2000s, studies by the National Human Rights Commission and Inha University showed that Korean AIDS patients struggled with fear of unemployment and social discrimination.
Stigmatization against people with AIDS continues to prevail in South Korea. In March, a study showed that more than 95 percent of 5,627 surveyed South Koreans were against the Health Ministry’s decision last year to bar geriatric hospitals from rejecting AIDS patients -- claiming the newly introduced legislation is unsafe for the public and therefore needs to be abolished.
“The AIDS epidemic today is more than ever characterized by stigma and discrimination,” said a UNAIDS report. “People living with HIV and the people most vulnerable to HIV, including, among others, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, people in detention, face high levels of stigma. Addressing stigma and discrimination in all aspects of life and society, including in health-care settings, is therefore essential for ending AIDS by 2030.”
While a law revision in 2008 prohibited any discrimination against people with HIV in the workplace here, and the country has no HIV-specific travel restrictions solely based on HIV status since 2010, South Korea has yet to pass a comprehensive antidiscrimination law.
“We must raise public awareness on HIV/AIDS based on accurate information, thereby eliminating social prejudices and improving access to voluntary HIV testing and treatment,” Jung said in his speech in New York.
