PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

Caribbean health officials on Tuesday said that at least 31 people are dying daily in the Caribbean from the deadly HIV/AIDS virus.

UNAIDS Director Karen Sealey, speaking at the launch of an HIV Epidemic and Response Synthesis in the Caribbean, said that the statistics also show that 47 persons had become infected with the virus on a daily basis last year.

UNAIDS said it welcomed the initiative and is providing technical support.

"Despite the progress accomplished in recent years in the struggle against HIV, serious challenges remain," said Sealey, who noted that this is because the Caribbean is the second-most affected region in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa.

She said that the project would help national and regional decision makers to reshape and rehearse strategies to respond to HIV.

The HIV/AIDS project is part of a worldwide exercise led by the World Bank and regional institutions to review the characteristics of the HIV epidemic in the Caribbean.

Evidence-based programming

It is aimed at providing the overall support the bank is providing to Caribbean countries and regional institutions responding to HIV.

"Its objective is to make available to decision makers a synthesis of the HIV epidemic and the response to it, and to describe the way forward in terns of evidence-based programming to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment care and support," said Jodi Zall Kusek, the monitoring and evaluation manager at the World Bank.

Figures show that at the end of 2007, an estimated 230,000 people were living with HIV and AIDS in the Caribbean. Some 17,000 people were newly infected during 2007, and there were 11,000 deaths due to AIDS.

In the Bahamas, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago more than two per cent of the adult population is living with HIV.