A UN report suggests that striking progress is being made in the fight against AIDS

ALL epidemics run their course. AIDS will be no exception. But concerted action can give them a helping hand to the finish line, and the latest report from the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS, the two United Nations agencies charged with tackling the epidemic, claims that is what is happening.

The most important figure in the report, which was published on Tuesday November 24th, is 17%. This is the estimated drop in the annual number of new infections compared with 2001, the year that the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed. The biggest proportionate fall, 25%, has been in East Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease is most rampant, the decline is estimated at 15%. That corresponds to 400,000 fewer African infections in 2008 than in 2001, though 1.9m Africans are still becoming infected each year. …