New HIV infections decreased by 5.3% and deaths dropped by 5%

A total of 1.8 million people contracted the AIDS virus last year, 5.3% less than in 2016, while the number of AIDS-related deaths declined by 5%, according to UNAIDS estimates. 19659002] In its annual report on the evolution of the pandemic, the organization said Wednesday that since the peak reached in 1996, new infections have decreased by 47%, while deaths in 2004 have decreased by more than 51%.

The coverage of antiretroviral therapy was expanded and by the end of 2017 we had received 21.7 million people worldwide, five and a half times more than ten years ago .

According to the report, 75% of people living with HIV know that they have the virus and among them 79% receive this type of treatment, which means that for 80% of them, the viral load has been removed.

(36.9 million at the end of 2017, 600,000 more than a year ago), 57% received treatment and 47%

In the end, the increase in the availability of drugs has resulted in a 34% reduction in the number of AIDS-related deaths between 2010 and 2017.

In the case of Eastern and Southern Africa, where 53% of people in the world lives with HIV, the mortality rate in this period was 42% and that of new infections by 30%.

In the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the number of new infections has almost doubled since 2000 due to deficiencies in primary prevention programs.

The inadequacies of the programs explain why the number of new infections has decreased by only 18% since 2010, far from 75%, target for 2020 that the UN General Assembly set in 2016.

At the time, the pandemic was to cease to be a threat to health by 2030.

With respect to the international funds available to fund new infections, a [19659002] However, UNAIDS warns against the fact that in 2017 "there have been no significant new commitments" from donors and it is feared that they will not decline.

In the report, the agency worries about dropping some key groups due to the prevalence of the disease, particularly men who have same-sex relationships (the likelihood of contracting HIV is 28 higher than that of heterosexual men). who inject drugs (22 times more risk) or prostitutes (13 times more)

These at-risk groups and their partners accounted for about 40% of new infections in the past year.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, the agency's experts estimated that 77.3 million people have contracted the infection and 35.4 million have died of AIDS-related illnesses.