(ANSA) - A United Nations AIDS report released on Monday warned Italy to step up its AIDS
prevention efforts amid a resurgence in HIV infections.
The UN's annual update on the global AIDS situation said that Italy and other Western countries were showing signs of complacency and that risky sexual behaviour was making a strong return.
It said a study carried out by a specialised Rome clinic revealed a "significant rise" in new HIV infections.
The number of infections reported over the period 2000-2003 were double those reported in 1984-1995 and were much higher than the period 1996-1999, the clinic report showed.
The UN expressed particular concern over the sharp spike in infections among heterosexuals and women.
Speaking at a conference in Rome for the presentation of the UN report, AIDS expert Mariangela Bavicchi said that "awareness over the risk of AIDS has fallen and improvements in drug treatments have given the false perception that the disease is 'curable'."
She said the Italian government was planning a nationwide public information campaign to help reverse this trend.
World Health Organization AIDS chief Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with ANSA in New York that "we have to start taking the issue of prevention more seriously again."
"After 1996, prevention efforts fell in developed countries. In the United States, for example, infections are on the rise again, particularly among the poor and homosexuals," he said.
According to to the UN report, there were almost five million reported new HIV infections around the world in 2005, 3.2 million of them in Africa. More than half of the new infections were in young people aged between 15 and 24.
An estimated 3.1 million people will have died of AIDS in 2005, including 500,000 children under the age of 15, the report said, while an estimated 40.3 million people globally are now living with HIV compared to 37.5 million in 2003.
The UN described the AIDS epidemic as "one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history."
The UN's report was released ahead of World Aids Day on December 1.
