Expertos urgen más pruebas para el SIDA

Aids experts call for more tests

En Asia hay 4,9 millones de personas infectadas con VIH.

Health experts in Brussels have been told that despite a fall in the global figure for the number of people affected by HIV and AIDS, the situation in Europe and central Asia is getting worse. They've called for efforts to expand testing for HIV.

Dominic Hughes reports.

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Around 2.4 million people in Europe and Central Asia are living with HIV, roughly 760, 000 of them within the European Union. What's concerning health professionals is that new infections are on the increase, and the number of children and adults living with the disease has doubled in the past six years.

Even more worrying, at least half these people don't know they're infected. In some countries as many as 70 percent don't realise they are HIV positive. And these people are much more likely to transmit the disease than those who have been diagnosed.

So a Brussels conference of more than 300 health workers from across Europe and Central Asia has called for much wider testing for HIV, trying to reach those who don't know they're infected. The experts warn that late diagnosis of HIV is causing unnecessary deaths from an illness that can now be treated and held at bay if caught early enough.

Dominic Hughes, BBC News Brussels

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HIV
VIH (acrónimo de Virus de la Inmunodeficiencia Humana)

roughly
aproximadamente / más o menos

concerning
lo que le preocupa (a los médicos)

infections are on the increase
aumentan las nuevas infecciones (por VIH)

has doubled
(las víctimas del VIH) se han duplicado

to transmit
(más propensos a) transmitir el VIH

diagnosed
diagnosticados

conference
conferencia o reunión (en este caso una conferencia de expertos médicos y científicos)

held at bay
mantener a raya (el VIH)

caught
detectado o diagnosticado (temprano)

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