In your html code move
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;" charset="UTF-8">
right after <head>
because
Always declare the encoding of your document using a meta element with a charset attribute, or using the http-equiv and content attributes (called a pragma directive). The declaration should fit completely within the first 1024 bytes at the start of the file, so it's best to put it immediately after the opening head tag. source
And the correct way to write meta is
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
Also you should send proper content-type header in index.php before any output:
header("Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");
Actually both solutions work alone, but I am using them together.