The AIDS global epidemic is witnessing a dramatic reversal, according to the latest assessment issued on Monday by United Nations AIDS (UNAIDS), which also noted that millions of HIV patients are dealing with the virus successfully.

That means more and more people who have been identified as HIV-positive are now living with ample support of breakthrough medicines as compared to when the disease was first discovered in the 1980s.

AIDS peaked to pandemic proportions in the late 1990s, the UNAIDS said, and since then millions have perished from the ravaging disease, with the world tallying deaths that soared to 2.2 million by around 2005.

By 2010, deaths due to AIDS-related diseases dropped to 1.8 million and according to Reuters, UNAIDS attributed the steep decline to more effective drugs that were made accessible to millions who were infected by the AIDS virus.

The past 12 months were in fact, 'game-changing period' for the global fight against AIDS, according to UNAIDS director Michel Sidibe, who also reported that some 2.5 million of deaths have been prevented since 1995 thanks mostly to new drugs that were more readily available than before.

The number of people seeking AIDS treatment also spiked in the last two years, Sidibe added, and "we are seeing more countries than ever before (achieving) significant reductions in new infections and stabilizing their epidemics."

"We've never had a year when there has been so much science, so much leadership and such results in one year," Sidibe told Reuters while noting too that the breakthroughs were seen amidst uncertainties in terms of financing the campaigns against the spread of AIDS.

As of last year, UNAIDS said that some 34 million people have been infected by HIV, which the agency said is part of the estimated 60 million that have contracted the virus since medical organisations started their monitoring of the disease that was formally recognised in the early 1980s.

Yet parallel with the rise of AIDS incidents, Sidibe said that millions have started getting treatment for the disease, with the numbers soaring to 6.6 million by last year, representing 47 percent of the identified 14.2 million cases that have been determined as eligible for treatment.

The rise, UNAIDS said, came at a time when researches have been supporting assertions that drug accessibility boosts the chances of combating the debilitating effects of AIDS, which also eliminates further infection, incidence of which plunged by 21 percent since 1997.

"The big point for us is the number of new infections, (which has been dwindling) ... and that's where you win against the epidemic," Sidibe stressed.

Yet the fight is far from over, Sidibe said, as he highlighted the alarming AIDS figures in the sub-Saharan African, presently identified by experts as a major battlefront in battling the disease, with 68 percent of HIV infection as of 2010.

"We need to maintain our investment ... in a smarter way ... then we'll see a serious decline in the epidemic," Sidibe was quoted by Reuters as saying.