Sub-Saharan Africa remains as the region worst hit by HIV/AIDS, with southern Africa continuing to be the epicenter of the global epidemic, despite hopeful signs shown in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe, the United Nations (UN) said on Monday.

Two UN agencies, Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS ( UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO), on Monday released the annual AIDS epidemic update reports on the latest developments in the global AIDS epidemic.

With just 13.6 percent of the world's population, Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 60 percent of all people, or 25.8 million, living with HIV, the virus causing Acquired Immunode- ciency Syndrome (AIDS).

In 2005, an estimated 3.2 million people in the region became newly infected, while 2.4 million adults and children died of AIDS. Among young people aged 15-24 years, an estimated 4.6 percent of women and 1.7 percent of men were living with HIV in 2005, said the report.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people globally since it was first recognized in 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history.

Despite recent, improved access to antiretroviral treatment and care in many regions of the world, the AIDS epidemic claimed 3.1 million lives in 2005 -- more than half a million were children.

The total number of people living with HIV reached its highest level -- an estimated 40.3 million people are now living with HIV. Close to 5 million people were newly infected with the virus in 2005, said the report.

"Southern Africa remains the epicenter of the global AIDS epidemic," as HIV infection levels among pregnant women are 20 percent or even higher in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, it said.

"With the exception of Zimbabwe, countries of southern Africa show little evidence of declining epidemics. HIV prevalence levels remain exceptionally high (except for Angola), and might not yet have reached their peak in several countries as the expanding epidemics in Mozambique and Swaziland suggest," it said.

South Africa's epidemic, one of the largest in the world, shows no sign of relenting, while in neighboring Mozambique, HIV infection levels are rising alarmingly.

"However, for the first time there are signs that one of the epidemics here could be ebbing," the UN said when mentioning that new evidence has shown a declining trend in national adult HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe.

Recent data from the national surveillance system show a decline in HIV prevalence among pregnant women from 26 percent in 2002 to 21 percent in 2004.

Also in Kenya and Uganda, declines in adult national HIV prevalence appear to be underway, the UN discovered.

"East Africa continues to provide the most hopeful indications that serious AIDS epidemics can be reversed," the report said. The countrywide drop in HIV prevalence among pregnant women seen in Uganda since the mid-1990s is now being mirrored in urban parts of Kenya, where infection levels are dropping, in some places quite steeply.

Elsewhere in East Africa, though, HIV prevalence has either decreased slightly or remained stable in the past several years.

The UN found that in much of sub-Saharan Africa, knowledge about HIV transmission routes remains low. Generally, women are less well-informed about HIV than are men, and this is also true of rural areas compared with those living in cities and towns.

"This is the case even in the ten countries where more than one out of ten adults is infected," said the report. In 24 sub-Saharan countries, including Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda, two thirds or more of women aged 15-24 years lacked comprehensive knowledge of HIV transmission.

Source: Xinhua