The decline in new HIV infections among adults has slowed worldwide, with some regions actually experiencing an uptick in recent years. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) issued a Prevention Gap Report outlining HIV incidence trends worldwide and presented its findings at the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa (AIDS 2016).

The good news is that the rate of new HIV infections among children has fallen by more than 70 percent since 2001 and continues to decline.

As for adults, UNAIDS estimates that 1.9 million have contracted HIV annually during the past five years. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, annual new adult cases of HIV rose 57 percent between 2010 and 2015. During the same period, the Caribbean saw its previously declining rate reverse course and rise 9 percent. The HIV rate in Latin America rose 2 percent during this period, while the rate declined marginally in Central Europe, North America, Western Africa and Central Africa. In Eastern Africa and Southern Africa, the rate declined by 4 percent during the first half of the decade, while the rate in Asia and the Pacific fell by 3 percent.

To read a press release about the report, click here.