Beijing - New HIV infections fell by 17 per cent globally from 2001 to last year, reflecting progress towards controlling spread of the virus, the United Nations umbrella group for HIV/AIDS reported on Tuesday. "The good news is that we have evidence that the declines we are seeing are due, at least in part, to HIV prevention," UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe said in presenting the agency's annual report in Shanghai.
"However, the findings also show that prevention programming is often off the mark and that if we do a better job of getting resources and programmes to where they will make most impact, quicker progress can be made and more lives saved," Sidibe said.
"We are very much encouraged," Dr Hiroki Nakatani, the World Health Organization's top official for HIV/AIDS, told reporters.
Nakatani said 42 per cent of people living with AIDS in developing nations were now receiving treatment, but added that the world still faced "many challenges" in fighting the spread of the virus.
Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu also welcomed the "encouraging progress" but highlighted a "big gap" in global funding for HIV/AIDS work.
Since 2001, when the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed, annual new infections in sub-Saharan Africa had fallen by about 15 per cent, or 400,000, the UNAIDS report said.
"In East Asia, new HIV infections declined by nearly 25 per cent and in South and South-East Asia by 10 per cent in the same time period," the report said.
"In Eastern Europe, after a dramatic increase in new infections among injecting drug users, the epidemic has leveled off considerably," it said.
But the report noted that HIV infections had risen again in some nations.
It estimated that around 33.4 million people were living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, many of them undiagnosed.
About 2.7 million people were infected with HIV and 3.2 million people died of AIDS-related health problems last year, it said.
