Berlin, 21 nov (EFE).-the cases of AIDS infection were reduced by 21% between 1997 and 2010, to 2.67 million worldwide, according to the report of the United Nations programme for AIDS (UNAIDS), widely used today in Berlin.
The number of new infections in children dropped to 390,000, compared the 550,000 in 2001, while the number of deaths in children under 15 declined between 2005 and 2010 a 20 per cent.
Although approximately half of pregnant women with the AIDS virus received antiretroviral drugs to prevent the spread of their babies, in 80% of cases the treatment was not optimal, it warned UNAIDS.
According to the report, the number of infected worldwide with the virus of AIDS and those who developed the disease amounted at the end of 2010 to 34 million, compared to 28.6 billion in 2001.
About 68% (22.9 million) occurred in the African continent, South of the Sahara, a region that lives only 12% of the world’s population, but concentrated 70% of new cases of infection with the AIDS virus.
South Africa, with 5.6 million cases, is the country in which they live most infected with AIDS, syndrome though the number of new infections was reduced significantly, as in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe, said the paper.
On the contrary, the number of infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia increased between 2001 and 2010 by 250% up to 1.5 million cases, of which 90% was concentrated on Russia and Ukraine.
The number of deaths from AIDS in the region stood at about 90,000, versus the 7,800 in 2001.
As long as the number of infected in Central and Western Europe is situated in around 840,000, with 30,000 new infections and 9,900 deaths
Last year were killed around the world 1.8 million people as a result of AIDS.
According to estimates by UNAIDS, antiretroviral drugs prevented other 700,000 deaths.
Since 1995, drugs have saved the lives of 2.5 million people infected with the virus of HIV/AIDS in low and middle income countries where about half of those infected has meanwhile access to therapies ARVs.
Health care is especially good in countries such as Cambodia, Chile, Croatia and Cuba, on the contrary that in States such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Ukraine, indicates the document.
According to UNAIDS, education, prevention and the strengthening of the rights of women continue to be measures important in the fight against this disease still incurable in the absence of a vaccine.
A man performs the test of AIDS in the fishing village of Igabilo, in Tanzania, where the rate of AIDS in the population is 15 percent. EFE/file
