HIV cases hit 40 million mark: UN

NEW DELHI—Progress has been made in tackling HIV infection in key African countries, but five million people were infected worldwide in 2005 to take the estimated total beyond 40 million, a UN report warned. The five million cases recorded in 2005 was “the highest number of people newly infected (in a year) since the beginning of the epidemic,” Peter Piot, executive director of the UNAIDS programme, told reporters in New Delhi. The AIDS epidemic claimed 3.1 million lives during the year, more than half a million of them children, the report said.
“The total number of people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) reached its highest level, an estimated 40.3 million” up from 37.5 million in 2003, said the AIDS Epidemic Update 2005, released here. The report that came ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1 noted that “the overall number of people living with HIV continued to increase in all regions of the world except the Caribbean.” The survey warned that growing epidemics were underway in eastern Europe, Central Asia and east Asia and that the spread of HIV/AIDS was intensifying in southern Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 64 percent of the new infections taking the number of cases there to an estimated 25.8 million.—Agencies