The National Health Institute (SZU) announced that the number of newly detected HIV infections has fallen in 2018, at a press conference on Tuesday. In 2017, 254 new cases were reported, whereas the corresponding figure for the months up to October 2018 was only 178.
This is the second consecutive year the number has dropped, and the SZU suggested this was due to new treatments being introduced at the time of detection, which reduce the viral load, and consequently the risk of transmitting the infection. Only twenty of the new cases were women, and the rest were men, a majority of whom had sex with other men.
