UN report: 140,000 new HIV carriers in Latin America in 2007

MEXICO CITY, July 29 (Xinhua) -- A total of 140,000 people were infected with HIV last year in Latin America, bringing the total number of HIV carriers in the region to 1.7 million, according to a UN report published Tuesday.

Some 63,000 people died in 2007 in the region as a result of AIDS caused by HIV, said the director of the Joint UN Program on HIV-Aids (UNAIDS) for Latin America, Cesar Nunez, at a press conference in the United Nations office in Mexico City.

The situation was the worst in two of Latin America's most populated countries, Brazil and Mexico, which reported 730,000 and200,000 HIV-positive people in 2007, he added.

In Brazil, some 184,000 people are currently under anti-retroviral treatment, with 30,000 new cases registered and some 11,000 deaths annually, according to the Global Report on the AIDS Epidemic 2008.

Eduardo Barbosa, coordinator of the Brazilian Program of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, said the Brazilian government faces challenges in widening AIDS testing and treatment to a larger scale, and in ending prejudice that leads many infected people to avoid looking for medical help.

However, Nunez said the HIV epidemic is more or less stable in Latin America, with few changes in the past 10 years.

But he added that HIV was still spreading in the region, mainly through same-sex intercourse, prostitution and use of intravenous drugs.

HIV carriers worldwide numbered an estimated 33 million in 2007.