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In 2017, the Old Continent recorded 160,000 new infections, of which only 130,000 for the countries located in its eastern part.
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Even though it is growing at a slower pace than before, the number of new HIV infections in Europe remains alarming, according to a report from the World Health Organization for the region and the European Monitoring and Control Center disease prevention.
The news is better if we look at the side of the euro area or even the European Union, in which a 20% drop in infections has been noted since 2015 among homobadual men.
"It's hard to talk about good news because it's a new year marked by an unacceptably high number of people infected with HIV," said Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Director for Europe. "If efforts to prevent new infections are gradually showing positive signs, we are not able to meet our 90-90-90 targets for 2020" (90% of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 90% of all HIV-infected people screened are receiving sustained anti-retroviral therapy, 90% of people receiving antiretroviral therapy have a sustained viral load, Editor's note).
"Despite our efforts, HIV is damaging the lives of so many people, causing not only suffering and sickness, but also discrimination and stigmatization," says EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis. He believes that in order to meet the goal of sustainable development of HIV eradication in the world by 2030, strengthen our collaboration with non-European countries. "We need to combat the stigma of HIV and its treatment and maintain our efforts to fight against false beliefs about the spread of the virus. It is also important for our public health services to provide easy and affordable access to testing and medical care for groups at increased risk of infection. "
As in the European Union in general, the number of new infections is decreasing in Belgium. According to Sciensano, it has decreased by 2% from 2016 to 2017 and 27.5% since 2012.
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