According to the annual report of the United Nations Program to Combat the HIV/AIDS, about 650,000 people died of AIDS in 2021 and one and a half million people were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) last year. (UNAIDS) released this Tuesday.
The total number of new infections last year was similar to that of 2020, while the number of deaths fell by 5.79%, although the death rate was particularly alarming among children.
According to UNAIDS, 15% of all deaths last year involved children under the age of 14, even though they represent less than 15% of the world’s people living with HIV.
A total of 38.4 million people worldwide have HIV, according to the latest available statistics, 1.5% more than in 2020, when the disease affected about 37.8 million people, according to the report released two days before World AIDS Day, which is celebrated in December. celebrated, was presented 1st.
In any case, the number of new infections has fallen by 54% since the disease peaked in 1996 and the number of deaths has fallen by 32% since 2004, when two million people died from AIDS.
Nearly two-thirds of global infections occurred through sexual contact between people belonging to high-risk groups (sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and transgender people).
On the upside, by 2021, the number of people with access to antiretroviral therapy increased by 5.22% to 28.7 million people treated.
By region, East and Southern Africa account for nearly half of all AIDS cases in the world: 20.6 million, of which 78% have access to antiretroviral treatment.
Treatment is less common in North Africa and Central Asia, where only half of the affected population has the necessary therapies.
The document highlighted the disparity between men and women in the fight against AIDS in different regions of the world and shows its impact on women in sub-Saharan Africa, where adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 are twice as likely to become infected as men of the same age range.
About 63% of new HIV infections in the region were women, nearly 10 percentage points higher than global statistics.
Source: DN
