Health
World AIDS Day: Concern about the spread of HIV in Eastern Europe
The red ribbon stands for the fight against AIDS. photo
© Jens Kalaene/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
During the pandemic, HIV seemed to have taken a back seat. But AIDS has not been overcome. On World AIDS Day, experts report an increase in infections in certain regions of Europe.
Meanwhile, progress in the fight against HIV has been made in Africa. Around 39 million people worldwide were living with HIV in 2022, and around 1.3 million people become newly infected with the immunodeficiency virus every year.
Spinner will take over the local conference chairmanship at the 25th World AIDS Conference in Munich from July 22nd to 26th next year. More than 15,000 participants from more than 175 countries are expected at the world’s largest scientific meeting on HIV. Scientists, doctors, health experts and activists want to discuss ways to contain HIV and AIDS.
Halving the number of new infections in Germany
In Germany, the number of new infections has been halved in the past 30 to 40 years, said Spinner – from almost 4,000 per year at the end of the 1980s to around 1,900 in 2023. The reasons are better information, low-threshold testing offers and effective antiviral therapy, which is largely enable normal life and also protect against transmission of the virus. In addition, the availability of preventive medication, the so-called HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), probably plays a role. This means that the number of new infections among homosexual and bisexual men has been significantly reduced.
According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), there is no noticeable decline in the number of new HIV infections among heterosexuals or among people who use intravenous drugs – on the contrary: the numbers even increased slightly in both groups. According to Spinner, around 520 people became infected through heterosexual means (including 310 women and 210 men), and around 370 more people became infected through intravenous drug use. There is no discernible decline in new infections here, as HIV PrEP has so far been almost entirely unknown in these groups.
In order to further reduce new infections in Germany, homosexual and bisexual men outside of large cities, heterosexual people at risk and intravenous drug users outside of medical care would have to be reached.