According to a report ‘HIV and AIDS in Portugal – 2020,’ produced by the Directorate-General for Health and the National Institute of Health Doctor Ricardo Jorge, between 1st of January – 31st of December 2019 nine new cases of HIV infection were diagnosed in Madeira, the lowest annual increase on record.
There are four fewer cases compared to previous year (13 cases were diagnosed in 2018) according to the report which attributes a total of 694 cases of HIV infection in the Region between 1983 and 2019.
Data from the report released this week, just days away from the World AIDS Day (1st of December), indicate that the percentage of late diagnoses in the Region reduced from 66.7% in 2018 to 50.0% in 2019. Bearing in mind that in 2018, Madeira had the highest percentage of late diagnoses in the country, this decrease is a welcome development which reflects the increased effort to diagnose cases earlier.
It should also be noted that Madeira is the region of the country with the lowest rate of new diagnoses, with 3.5 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. In comparison, the district of Lisbon has the highest rate with 391 new cases, which corresponds to 13.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Most of the new notified cases belong to men, who represent 69.3% of those infected, with the median age at diagnosis being 38 years. In 2019, there were no cases of HIV transmission in children.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
