The executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Winnie Byanyima, has said right now, the world is not moving fast enough to end AIDS.

“If leaders fail to end inequalities, the world could face 7.7 million AIDS-related deaths over the next 10 years,” she warned in a tweet on Thursday.

Byanyima said that they see the huge inequalities that are within countries and between countries are preventing them from achieving progress against the AIDS pandemic, which was already off track.

She said that the progress is now under even greater strain as the COVID-19 crisis continues to rage, disrupting HIV prevention and treatment services, schooling, violence-prevention programmes and more.

“Globally, the curves are not bending fast enough to stop the pandemic. Last year, our data showed that 1.5 million people were newly infected. So the infections are moving along the fault lines of equalities,” she said.

Byanyima said recently that they cannot be forced to choose between ending the AIDS pandemic today and preparing for the pandemics of tomorrow.

“The only successful approach will achieve both. As of now, we are not on track to achieve either,” she said.

Uganda recently launched a new HIV campaign dubbed 'Time Up' to accelerate the drive towards ending AIDS by 2030.

Health minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng said the new campaign is critical in drumming up social behaviour change interventions to end HIV in Uganda.

It aims at raising HIV risk perception among high risk audiences and increasing the proportion of people at high risk of getting HIV accessing testing services.

It also aims at motivating those who test HIV negative to adopt and sustain HIV prevention practices and services.

The campaign also aims at motivating those who are HIV positive to start and adhere to HIV treatment and equip health service providers with knowledge and skills to offer client-centred HIV services.

In Uganda, HIV prevalence reduced to 5.4% in 2020 from 18% in the 1980s, said President Yoweri Museveni recently.

He said in his World AIDS Day message on December 2 that 1.4 million people are living with HIV and of these, 1.2 million are on treatment.

He said globally, there are about 37.7 million people who are living with HIV and of these, 1.5 million were infected in 2020.

His urged the young to remain abstaining from sex and focus on their studies until they are old enough and prepared to face the world.