UN cuts HIV infections estimate
2007-11-20 17:27
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Geneva - HIV/Aids has infected 2.5 million people around the world this year and 32.2 million are now living with the virus, an annual United Nations report said on Tuesday.
Revised figures in the latest UN Aids study also slashed an estimate for total infections this time last year to 32.7 million from 39.5 million cases, the number given in the agency's 2006 report.
More than two million people have died from the disease in 2007, according to the UN's HIV/Aids body.
Numbers of people living with the virus were levelling out and the percentage of the population affected was now in decline, the report said.
Two-thirds of new infections were recorded in sub-Saharan Africa, although the overall number now infected in the region - where three-quarters of the world's Aids deaths have occurred - was down by 1.7 million this year.
About 22.5 million people living in Africa have HIV/Aids, 68% of the global total, the report said.
In Asia there are now 4.9 million cases, up 440 000 from last year.
The Caribbean is the second worst-hit region of the world in per capita terms with one percent of adults ? 230 000 people - carrying the virus, according to the report.
The year 2007 has seen 11 000 deaths and 17 000 new infections in the island region so far, it said.
- AFP