Sub-Saharan Africa recorded a 20 percent improvement in people undergoing HIV and Aids treatment between 2009 and 2010, a new report from UNAIDS says. 



UNAIDS, charged with the international campaign against HIV and Aids says that new infections were declining sharply as a result of a better anti-retroviral therapy coverage.

"The most dramatic increases in anti-retroviral therapy coverage have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, with a 20 percent increase between 2009 and 2010 alone," reads the report.

UNAIDS said universal access to treatment, which translates into coverage of more than 80 percent, has been achieved in Botswana, Namibia and Rwanda, among others. Swaziland and Zambia have reported coverage levels of between 70 and 80 percent.

Around 6.6 million people, or 47 percent, are now receiving treatment out of 14.2 million eligible people in low and middle income countries.

"Across cities and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, from Harare to Addis Ababa to rural Malawi and South Africa's Kwazulu Natal province, introducing HIV treatment has dramatically reduced Aids-related mortality," the report continued.

The report, released on Monday, credits the decline in new HIV infections to changes in sexual behaviour, increased condom use and people waiting longer before becoming sexually active.

In Namibia, treatment access has reached 90 percent while condom use rose to 75 percent, resulting in a 60 percent drop in new infections by 2010.

Although there are more people living with the disease,  the number of HIV/Aids-related deaths had decreased by 21 percent in 2010 compared to 2005, when deaths from HIV/Aids peaked.

The number of infections had also decreased significantly by 21 percent in 2010 compared to peak levels in 1997.

"Since the peak of the epidemic in 1997, the total number of new HIV infections in the region has declined by more than 26 percent, from 2.6 million to 1.9 million," the report says.

The report said, in South Africa, whose population of 5.6 million HIV-infected people remains the biggest in the world, the incidence rate has fallen by a third between 2001 and 2009, from 2.4 percent to 1.5 percent.

Despite the sharp decline in HIV infections Africa still accounted for 70 percent of the world's new infections last year with about 1.2 million people dying of AIDS in the region in 2010.

Faced with the economic crises and the unavailability of a vaccine, critics say UNAIDS's universal access to HIV prevention by 2015 is over ambitious.

Meanwhile, UNAIDS says that while it "needs a scaling up of funding to US$ 22-24 billion in 2015" in line with its zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths strategy, only US$ 15 billion was available for the AIDS response in low- and middle-income countries.