By Liz Highleyman

While HIV continues to ravage countries around the globe, the rate of new infections has stabilized worldwide, according to the latest overview of the epidemic by the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), released in advance of the XVII International AIDS Conference taking place this week in Mexico City.

According to the report, an estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV in 2007. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicenter of the epidemic, accounting for about 67% of all HIV cases and about 72% of all deaths due to HIV/AIDS. The estimated number of new infections in 2007 was 2.7 million, after peaking at around 5 million. The number of deaths due to HIV/AIDS also fell, by about 10% to 2 million.

While the epidemic in Africa affects women and men in roughly equal proportions -- many of them infected through heterosexual contact -- in the rest of the world HIV/AIDS is concentrated among high-risk groups such as injection drug users in Russia and Eastern Europe, and men who have sex with men (MSM) in developing and developed countries alike.

In addition to a plateau in the number of new infections, there are now more people with HIV/AIDS receiving antiretroviral therapy than ever before -- about 3 million in 2007 compared with around 300,000 in 2003. About one-third of pregnant women are receiving therapy, which helps prevent mother-to-child transmission. In part for this reason, the number of new HIV infections among children decreased to 370,000 worldwide in 2007. Nevertheless, millions of people worldwide still do not have access to this lifesaving treatment.

"We've achieved more in the past five years than in the past two decades," said outgoing UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot. "But if we relax now, it would be disastrous. It would wipe out all of our previous investments."

The full report is available online from www.unaids.com.

8/05/08

Source
UNAIDS. Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic 08. July 2008.