South Africa, the country with the most HIV cases in the world, recorded its first significant decline in the number of infected people, according to a study published on Monday.
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According to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), a South African public research institute, which conducted a survey of 76,000 people, the proportion of South Africans carrying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, fell by 1.3 between 2017 and 2017 % decreased from 14% to 12.7% of the population in 2022.
In 2022, around 7.8 million South Africans out of a population of 62 million carried the virus, compared to 7.9 million in 2017, the date of the last survey.
The reasons for the decline are complex, said Khangelani Zuma, director of the HSRC and chief researcher of the survey.
Despite a decline in the number of virus carriers in all provinces, the east of the country and particularly the Zulu region remain the most affected. The black community is the most affected.
Mr Zuma also noted that “people living with HIV are living longer than before”, particularly thanks to the increasing use of antiretroviral therapy (ART), which has radically changed the outlook on life for people living with AIDS/HIV.
However, South Africa alone still accounts for a third of Africa’s cases, with more than 85,000 people dying of AIDS each year in recent years.
The study is concerned about the high number of infected women and young people. “We know that older men infect younger women,” said John Blandford, South African director of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Abroad (Pepfar), which has dedicated more than $100 billion to the fight over the past twenty years of the epidemic.
They stressed that these new infections were linked to a decline in the use of condoms, an effective tool in preventing the spread of AIDS.