Latin America Countries (LAC) and countries in the Caribbean are behind on meeting the established global and regional targets of a 75 percent reduction in new HIV infections in young people by 2020.
A 2017 report by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, said that they had not seen “the decline needed to end the epidemic.”
The article has been named “HIV Prevention in the Spotlight: An Analysis from the Perspective of the Health Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2017.”
According to the report, in the past 16 years, new HIV infections in Latin America and the Caribbean have trended downward, however, new infections have “plateaued” since 2010 with 120,000 new infections reported in that year alone.
And although there was a slight decline in 2015 and 2016, the estimated number of new HIV cases in the region has remained relatively constant.
The report went on to state that males and females aged 15-24 accounted for one-third of the total estimated population with new HIV infections in both Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016.
In this age group, the report said females accounted for a high percentage of the new infections in the Caribbean, while males had two-thirds of the new infections in Latin America.
In 2016, males over the age of 15 accounted for 70 percent of all new infections in Latin America and 51 percent in the Caribbean.
Haiti, however, is an exception and is the only Caribbean country which has seen 28 percent more new infections in females that males.
