World AIDS Day: A third of HIV-positive people in Spain do not know about their condition

To mark World AIDS day today (Saturday), the 31^st anniversary of the first-ever diagnosis, figures have been released concerning patients around the globe.

A total of 170 children in Spain have been diagnosed with HIV in the last four years, of which 86 per cent caught it from their mothers whilst in the womb.

Of these children who were positive from birth, 60 per cent were born in Spain, although the percentage of those with Spanish mothers and fathers has not been given.

María B., 19, from Madrid, said she was told at the age of eight by her grandmother, who brought her up, that she was HIV positive.

She caught it from her mother, who died when María was two, and with whom she says she has unfinished business – she does not know whether she can forgive her mother for having her when she knew that both their lives could be in danger.

But the condition has been kept under control, although she has had some trouble with medication – on one occasion, she broke her hip and ankle because the drugs were stripping calcium from her bones.

However, she claims she has a happy life with lots of friends, and has had several partners already.

After someone she knew told everyone about her condition, this became her 'liberation', María says: her friends concluded that if they had not become infected in all the time they had known each other, there was nothing to worry about.

Although other people's ignorance can be a problem, says the teenager – she has even been asked if it is possible to contract HIV by hugging someone.

It is estimated that 34 million people worldwide live with HIV, although only 54 per cent of those who need treatment have access to it.

According to the WHO, only 28 per cent of children who need medication for HIV receive it.

Some 2.5 million people around the world contracted HIV in the last year and 1.7 million died, although 10 years ago, the annual death toll was closer to 3.2 million and even seven years ago, it was 2.2 million.

In Spain, between 120,000 and 150,000 people live with HIV, although only 80,000 to 110,000 know about it and are in treatment for it.

It is this ignorance about their own condition that leads to 70 of cases of HIV being transmitted, says the AIDS Study Group (GESIDA), part of the Spanish Society for Infectious Illnesses and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC).

Around the world, 330,000 children were diagnosed in the past year – 24 per cent fewer than in 2009, which saw 430,000 children found to be HIV positive.

A total of 79 per cent of new diagnoses in Spain in 2010 were in patients who had contracted the HIV virus via sexual intercourse.

The typical profile of a patient in Spain is a man of age approximately 35 who is diagnosed late, but there is no significant difference between the numbers of heterosexual and homosexual patients.

In the early days, when HIV and AIDS were first discovered, it was thought that this was a disease almost exclusively affecting homosexual men, but studies in recent years have shown there are just as many, if not more, cases of heterosexual females in the western world who have the virus.

HIV-positive men have a 90 per cent chance of passing on the virus through sex, whereas in women this falls to around 10 per cent.

Happily, nowadays, 99 per cent of HIV-positive women who are pregnant and given the right medication give birth to healthy babies with no trace of the virus, according to specialist Dr Jorge Romero.

Although a cure for AIDS and HIV is still a long way from becoming a reality, massive steps in treatment of the conditions have been made since the first diagnosis on December 1, 1981, and where the HIV virus is caught early enough, it can be kept under control by treatment and patients can lead a more or less normal life and mainly live as long as a non-affected person.