World aids Vaccine Day - Awareness...
Every year on 18 May, World aids Vaccine Day or hiv Vaccine Awareness Day is celebrated globally. It started in the year 1997 when the then US President Bill Clinton gave a speech in which he emphasized the need for vaccines for the prevention and control of HIV. Year after this, it is celebrated every year since 1998. So let's know how deadly aids has become in the world and the states of India?
AIDS-related deaths in the world and India
According to data from UNAIDS, since 2004, AIDS-related deaths have decreased by 64%. In 2020, around 680,000 people died of AIDS-related diseases globally, down from the highest level of 1.9 million in 2004.
Almost similar trends are visible in india as well. According to NACO data, in the year 2020, there were 51,000 deaths due to hiv in india, which is almost 80% less than 2.5 lakh deaths in the year 2005.
Post-Covid research on mRNA vaccine for HIV
Deaths from hiv are decreasing in the world but still, this figure is very high. That's why the emphasis was on the vaccine to deal with it. It's not that efforts weren't made before Clinton first pushed for the vaccine. Efforts to develop a vaccine to combat hiv began 35 years ago. The National Institutes of health (NIH) started its first clinical trials in 1987 but so far with no success.
But in the meantime, seeing the rapidity shown in the production of Covid's vaccine and its good results, scientists are very excited about the mRNA vaccine for the hiv vaccine as well. In march 2022 this year, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), started the Phase One trial of three hiv vaccines based on the Messenger RNA (mRNA) platform.
HIV prevalence is higher in northeastern states
The northeastern states like Mizoram (2.37%) Nagaland (1.44%) and Manipur (1.15%) have the highest hiv prevalence. It is followed by the states of andhra pradesh (0.66%), meghalaya (0.53%), telangana (0.48%), and karnataka (0.45%). Apart from these states, Delhi, Maharashtra, Puducherry, Punjab, Goa, and tamil Nadu also have higher hiv prevalence among adults than the national average (0.22%).
