London (Reuters) – most people never live with the AIDS virus, but this is due above all to improved access to medicines that keep patients alive and well for many years, the programme of the United Nations against HIV (UNAIDS) said on Monday.

In its annual report on the epidemic, UNAIDS said that the number of people who died from the disease was reduced to 1.8 million in 2010, with a maximum of 2.2 million in the mid-2000s.

The director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, said that the past 12 months had been “a year that changed the landscape” in the global fight against AIDS.

Some 2.5 million deaths have avoided in poor countries and middle-income since 1995 due to the introduction of drugs against AIDS and better access to them, according to

UNAIDS.

Much of that success came in the last two years, with the rapid increase in the number of people receiving treatment.

“Have never had a year in which there has been so much science, both leadership and thus results in a single year”, said Sidibe in a telephone interview from the headquarters of UNAIDS in Geneva

“Even in these times of crisis of public finances and uncertainty about financing, we are seeing results.” “We are seeing more countries than ever (achieve) a significant reduction in new infections and stabilizing their epidemics,” asserted.

Since the beginning of the pandemic of AIDS in the 1980s, more than 60 million people have been infected with the virus of human immunodeficiency (HIV) that causes AIDS. HIV can be controlled for many years with a cocktail of drugs, but there is still a cure.

-Links to graphics of UNAIDS in English: http://link.reuters.com/kag25s and http://link.reuters.com/mag25s

Treatment for prevention

The UNAIDS report said that 34 million people worldwide had HIV in 2010, an increase to the 33.3 million 2009.

Among the most dramatic changes was the jump in the number of people being treated with AIDS drugs when they need.

Of the 14.2 million people qualifying to receive treatment in low-income countries and media, some 6.6 million, or 47 percent were receiving, said UNAIDS, and 11 poor and middle-income countries now have universal access to treatment for HIV, with a coverage of 80 per cent or more.

This compares with 36 percent of the 15 million people needing treatment in 2009 who received drugs against AIDS.

Among the leading manufacturers of drugs against HIV are Gilead, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.

Better access to medicines from these and other manufacturers not only means that fewer people die of AIDS each year, said UNAIDS, but also the risk of new infections has fallen.

Studies scientific demostran than if people with HIV receive treatment in time can reduce considerably the number of infections of the virus.

Sidibe said that this was beginning to be seen in the number of cases new.

There were 2.7 million new HIV infections around the world in 2010, representing 15 per cent less than in 2001, and a 21 per cent less than at the peak of the epidemic in 1997.

“The crucial point for us is the number of new infections there is where desire you to the epidemic”, said Sidibe.

Despite advances in treatment and prevention of HIV, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most affected, representing 68 percent of all people living with HIV in 2010, while its population represents only 12 per cent of total world.

About 70 percent of new infections with HIV by 2010, and almost half of all AIDS-related deaths occurred in Africa sub-Saharan.

(Kate Kelland report); (Edited by Marion Giraldo in Spanish)