50,000 new HIV diagnoses in women in Europe in one year

[Jim Allen]

We still have a long way to go.

Aidsmap full story: http://aidsmap.com/news/feb-2020/50000-new-hiv-diagnoses-women-europe-one-year

In short:

Globally, more women are living with HIV than men, but in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region, twice as many men are newly diagnosed with HIV than women each year, a study recently published in Eurosurveillance shows. Dr Otilia Mårdh of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and colleagues examined demographic, clinical characteristics and trends among women diagnosed with HIV in the WHO European region, and found that half of women were diagnosed late.

The researchers analysed all HIV diagnoses between 2009 and 2018, from the 53 countries in the WHO European Region. In 2018, there were 141,552 new HIV diagnoses, and over a third (35%) of these were among women. The median age for women at diagnosis was 37 years. Most of the diagnosed women were in the 30 to 49 years age group.

Of the almost 50,000 new diagnoses in women in 2018, most (86%) were in the east sub-region (which includes Russia and countries in central Asia), with the west and the central sub-regions accounting for 12% and 2% respectively.

In the same year, 92% of the women were reported to have acquired HIV through heterosexual transmission, while transmission through injecting drugs accounted for 7%.