By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. Dec. 1, 2015: As organizations around the world pause to mark World AIDS Day today under the theme, ‘The Time to Act Is Now,’ here are eight shocking facts on HIV from the Caribbean and Latin America region that you may not know:
1: According to PAHO, 30 percent of people with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean do not know they have the virus and many are diagnosed when the disease is already in an advanced stage.
2: According to UNAIDS, an estimated 2 million people are living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean.
3: Some 280,000 live in the Caribbean while 1.7 million live in Latin America.
4: Of that number, 33,000 are Latin American children while 13,000 are Caribbean kids.
5: The vast majority of these infections were in adults and youths, mainly gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender women, and sex workers and their clients.
6: About 100, 000 people are newly infected cases. Some 13, 000 are in the Caribbean and 87,000 in Latin America.
7: Some 2,500 infants in the region contracted the HIV virus from their mothers last year but new HIV infections in children have fallen by half since 2010. Some 2, 000 kids who contracted the HIV virus live in Latin America and 500 are in the Caribbean.
8: Some 41, 000 people in Latin America died from the disease in 2014 while 8,800 deaths were reported in the Caribbean.
