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MARIO RITTER: And I’m Mario Ritter. The 19th International AIDS Conference took place last month in Washington, DC. More than 20,000 people attended the six-day event. Today, we tell about some of the latest developments in the fight against AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes the disease. (MUSIC) BARBARA KLEIN: More than eight million people around the world are now receiving antiretroviral drug therapy. That is a twenty percent increase over the past year. All those receiving the treatment have the human immunodeficiency virus, known as HIV. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS released a report before the AIDS conference. The report is called “Together We Will End AIDS.” It says almost one point four million people were added to the number of people receiving treatment in last year alone. More than thirty-four million people are now living with HIV. The report says that is the largest number ever, because of the greater availability of life-saving drugs. But about two-point-five million people were newly-infected with the virus last year. MARIO RITTER: Michel Sidibe is the head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, also called UNAIDS. MICHEL SIDIBE: “I personally believe that it is a new era -- new era for treatment, new era for prevention. But it is also from my personal reading a beginning of a journey to getting to zero.” Michel Sidibe says the world is now in a time of shared responsibility, mutual accountability and global solidarity. He says those issues will influence the discussion about HIV/AIDS in the coming years. | 
