THE UN: HIV infection is rising in every region of the world and most worryingly in countries like Uganda and Thailand, which had been heralded as success stories in the fight against Aids, the United Nations said yesterday.
Nearly 40 million adults and children are infected worldwide. The most striking increases in new cases are in east Asia and in eastern Europe/central Asia, mainly due to drug use and unsafe sex, UNAids and the World Health Organisation said.
Somebody is infected with the HIV virus every eight seconds, equivalent to 11,000 infections worldwide every day, while another 8,000 infected people die, the two agencies said in a joint annual report 2006 Aids Epidemic Update.
Some 4.3 million people across the globe became infected with HIV this year, with a heavy concentration among young people, bringing the total number to an estimated 39.5 million.
Sub-Saharan Africa, which recorded 2.8 million new infections, still bears the brunt of the Aids scourge, with 24.7 million people living with HIV, according to the report.
Of the 2.9 million global deaths from Aids last year, the highest number recorded, 2.1 million occurred in Africa, the core area of the 25-year-old epidemic.
China's drug-fuelled HIV epidemic, which accounts for about half its estimated 650,000 infections, has reached "alarming proportions".Uganda is among countries seeing a resurgence of infection rates which were previously stable or declining, it said.
New data showed erratic condom-use in Uganda and more men having sex with more than one partner, as well as evidence of rising HIV prevalence in some rural areas, according to Karen Stanecki, UNAids senior epidemiologist.
"In Thailand, another one of our past success stories, the number of new infections continues to drop but the epidemic is changing and countries such as Thailand and Uganda need to take into account the fact that epidemics do change over time," said Ms Stanecki.