DOH: More than 250K people living with HIV by year-end
The number of people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLHIV) in the country is expected to increase to an estimated 252,800 by the end of this year, data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed.
According to a report by the Epidemiology Bureau of the DOH that was posted on Facebook by the Quezon City health monitoring unit on Tuesday, there are 149,375 PLHIVs in the country that have been diagnosed or laboratory-confirmed as of September.
The majority of them, or 67 percent, are currently on lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART), with 57 percent having been tested for viral load, or the amount of HIV present in an infected person’s blood, within the past year.
Although most PLHIVs who are diagnosed are already on ART, this still falls short of the 95 by 95 by 95 targets set by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS). The DOH noted that the country integrated these targets in its medium-term plan with the goal of diagnosing 95 percent of all PLHIVs, with 95 percent of them receiving treatment, and of which 95 percent would have a suppressed viral load by 2030.
Data from the DOH showed that from July to September this year alone, there were 5,583 newly confirmed cases of HIV, which was 22 percent higher than the number of cases recorded in the same period last year.
Daily average
On average, there are 61 cases of HIV reported in the country per day, also 22 percent higher than last year’s average of 50 cases per day.
Of these new HIV cases, 95 percent are males. Most of them, or 42 percent, are 25 to 34 years old, while 30 percent are 15 to 24 years old. Sexual contact was consistently the leading mode of HIV transmission, with the DOH noting that 96 percent of all reported cases from 1984 to 2025 were acquired through such means.
When it comes to mortality, the DOH said there were 125 reported deaths due to any cause among PLHIVs from July to September, which was 2 percent lower than the number of deaths in the same period last year.
The agency pointed out that in total, there have been 9,903 deaths reported among PLHIVs in the country since January 1984, of which 47 percent had an advanced case of the infection at the time of diagnosis.
Data from the DOH showed that the number of newly diagnosed HIV cases with an advanced stage of the disease has been decreasing, with the current proportion 18 percent lower than in 2020.
