The Council of Ministers received a report on the current state of the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Speaking to reporters at the end of the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), the government spokesperson, the Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism, Ana Comoana, said that the number of people living with HIV in 2017 was about 2.12 million, but the number of new infections has fallen from 500 (the estimate for 2016) to 356 a day. The number of confirmed deaths from AIDS had fallen by 20 per cent, and the rate of vertical transmission of HIV from mothers to their unborn children had fallen from 17 to 14 per cent.
The 2017 data indicate that 170,000 children are living with HIV, and that year 120,000 pregnant women were HIV positive.
The most recent national survey was the Survey on Indicators of Immunisation, Malaria and HIV/AIDS (IMASIDA), carried out by the National Health Institute in 2015, which estimated HIV prevalence at 13.2 per cent of people aged between 15 and 49.
