Swaziland turns around world's highest HIV infection rate: report

Swaziland, which bears the world's heaviest HIV burden, has halved the rate of new infections in five years by boosting access to virus-suppressing drugs, researchers said yesterday.

The country where about one in three adults are infected with the AIDS-causing virus, has vastly expanded public programmes to test people for HIV infection and put them on life-saving anti-retroviral treatment (ART).

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"Since 2011, national HIV incidence in Swaziland dropped by almost half," a research team led by Velephi Okello of the Swazi health ministry said in a written presentation to an HIV science conference in Paris.

Incidence is the word used by epidemiologists for the rate of new infections in a population.

"Sustaining these achievements will be paramount to Swaziland's success in curbing its severe HIV epidemic," said the researchers.

In 2011, 31 percent of adults (aged 18-49) out of a total country population of just over 1.2 million, were infected with HIV, according to government data.