Geneva - New data released by the United Nations Tuesday on HIV/AIDS shows the percentage of people living with the virus has levelled off and the number of new infections has fallen. The joint UN and World Health Organization (WHO) programme UNAIDS said in Geneva Tuesday it estimated more than 33 million people still have HIV in 2007, 16 per cent less than the estimated 39.5 million in 2006.
Around 2.5 million new people will have been infected in 2007, and 2.1 million will have died of AIDS.
The agency believed the decline in AIDS cases, seen in the last two years, was due in part to the success of HIV programmes.
The latest figures were a result of improved methods of gathering data.
UNAIDS Executive Director Dr Peter Piot said: "Unquestionably, we are beginning to see a return on investment. New HIV infections and mortality are declining and the prevalence of HIV levelling. But with more than 6,800 new infections and over 5,700 deaths each day due to AIDS, we must expand our efforts in order to significantly reduce the impact of AIDS worldwide."
Sub-Saharan Africa remained most severely affected with an estimated 1.7 million new infections in 2007.
Two-thirds of people living with HIV, an estimated 22.5 million people, were found in this region.
UNAIDS said since 2001, the number of people living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia had increased by more than 150 per cent from 630,000 to 1.6 million in 2007.
In Asia, the estimated number of people living with HIV in Vietnam had more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, and Indonesia had the fastest growing epidemic.
The new methodology for compiling estimates had allowed significant downward revisions for India and in five sub-Saharan African countries: Angola, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. The new method accounted for 70 per cent of the reduction in HIV prevalence in 2007 compared with 2006 estimates.
WHO's HIV/AIDS Director Dr Kevin De Cock said, "While these new estimates are of better quality than those of the past, we need to continue investing more in all countries and all aspects of strategic information relating to health."
