EODY warns of increased number of new HIV diagnoses in 2023

December 1 was established by WHO as World AIDS Day (since 1988) and aims to raise awareness and inform the public about HIV, modes of transmission, prevention, screening and treatment of the deadly disease.

“This year, our country celebrates December 1st, having taken an extremely important step regarding the prevention of HIV infection with the adoption of a joint decision of the ministers (health, finance, digital governance, bulletin B6664/24.11.2023) a few days ago. Greece has established a process for the preventive provision of antiretroviral drugs (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)) to people negative for the human immunodeficiency virus HIV,” EODY said in a statement on this matter.

PrEP is the provision of preventive therapy to people with high-risk behavior for acquiring HIV, before possible exposure to someone who is HIV-positive. The WHO and the US and European Centers for Disease Control (CDC and ECDC) have issued recommendations calling on countries to include PrEP in their strategy to combat the HIV epidemic, but this has proven to be possible not in all countries.

Regarding epidemiological surveillance of HIV, 2023 is the year during which the country has changed the way it registers new HIV diagnoses, since the National HIV Register of the Ministry of Health was introduced, in which All data registered from the beginning of the epidemic until 04/04/2023 in the EODY HIV archive is collected.

During first ten months of the yearaccording to EODY, the number of new HIV diagnoses is at a slightly higher level compared to the previous 4 years (531, corresponding to 5.1 per 100,000 population). Moreover, the most common route of infection is sexual intercourse, mainly between men (35.2% of new diagnoses).

However, in the available data for a significant proportion of new diagnoses (37.3%) transmission path not specifiedwhich makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions regarding routes of disease transmission.

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