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UNAIDS: Sharp drop in new infections

The latest Global Report on HIV/AIDS says the number of new infections continues to fall, with the sharpest declines in the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

The UNAIDS report says overall there are about 34-million people living with the disease, nearly 70 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The region remains the “most severely affected with nearly one in twenty adults living with HIV.” The next hardest hit regions are the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

UNAIDS also says there’s “cause for concern” over the number of newly infected people in the Middle East and North Africa. The MENA region traditionally has had very low numbers of HIV infections. But the report says there’s a trend upward. New infections have increased 35 percent since 2001.

On the positive side, the number of new infections worldwide has fallen sharply since 2001 to about two and a half million people per year.

“Today we are reporting a more than 50 percent drop in new infections across 25 countries since 2001. Thirteen of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, the region that’s by far the most affected by HIV – a 73 percent reduction in Malawi – and Botswana, a 71 percent drop. I mean these are very, very impressive figures,” said Bernhard Schwartlander is UNAIDS’ Director of Evidence, Innovation and Policy.

South Africa – the country with the largest number of infections – has shown a 41 percent reduction since 2001. At the same time, treatment in South Africa was scaled up by 75 percent over the last two years.