HIV Infections, AIDS Deaths Fall as More Get Drugs, UNAIDS Says
More than 1.2 million people began taking anti-HIV drugs last year, an increase of 30 percent, as the number of new infections declined for a 12th straight year.
About 2.6 million people contracted the AIDS-causing virus worldwide last year, 19 percent less than in 1997 when the number of new infections peaked, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, said its annual report today. AIDS-related deaths fell to 1.8 million last year from a peak of 2.1 million in 2004, the Geneva-based agency said.
“We have halted and begun to reverse the epidemic,” Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said in the report. “Fewer people are becoming infected with HIV and fewer people are dying from AIDS.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jason Gale at j.gale@bloomberg.net.
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