Mónica García, Minister of Health, announced today that her department will allocate 10 million euros in 2024 to finance condoms for young people between 16 and 22 years old. She announced it at the inauguration of the XXI National Congress on AIDS and STIs “The Ages of HIV”, organized in Toledo by the Spanish Interdisciplinary AIDS Society (SEISIDA).
In addition to talking about the HIV situation in our country, at the congress, held in Toledo, concern was expressed about the sustained increase in sexually transmitted infections in recent years, which more frequently affects young women and men. . It is for this reason that free condoms are being studied by the public system for adolescents with lower purchasing power, to whom those 10 million euros would be allocated for this year.
Promoting condom use is a measure that, in addition to preventing HIV infection, helps avoid other sexually transmitted infections as well as unwanted pregnancies.
Current situation of AIDS in Spain
In Spain, there are currently around 150,000 people with HIV, of which 92.5% know their diagnosis, 96.6% receive antiretroviral treatment and, of these, 90.4% have an undetectable viral load. These data reflect a sustained improvement in the treatment of the infection over the years. However, García has pointed out that “we must achieve more than 95% in all these objectives by 2026.” In any case, there has been a decrease in the proportion of people not diagnosed with HIV, which went from 13% in the period 2017-2019 to 7.5% in the period 2021-2022. The goal now is to reduce it to less than 5%.
In Spain, there are currently approximately 150,000 people with HIV and in 2022, 2,956 new diagnoses will be reported.
In 2022, 2,956 new HIV diagnoses were reported. Although the number of new cases has shown a downward trend in recent years, “we need the decline to be faster,” said the minister. To achieve this, various combined prevention strategies have been established.
One of them is Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV, a measure whose public financing was authorized in November 2019 and which is already implemented in all autonomous communities, with nearly 23,000 people on PrEP by the end of 2023.
This strategy is carried out within the framework of the agreement between the Ministry of Health and SEISIDA, which facilitates support activities for the implementation and monitoring of PrEP against HIV.
On the other hand, Mónica García has emphasized that one of the main objectives in this area is to achieve zero discrimination, an aspect that was especially worked on during the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU in the last half of 2023.
This effort has been the result of the work carried out within the framework of the Social Pact for non-discrimination and equal treatment associated with HIV, approved by the Ministry of Health in November 2018. The pact seeks to eliminate stigma and discrimination related to HIV and AIDS, guaranteeing equal treatment and opportunities, non-discrimination, respect for human rights and the diversity of the people affected.
The minister has stressed that SEISIDA represents a multidisciplinary response model by bringing together professionals from the social and health fields, patient associations, NGOs and central and regional administrations. Shares the objective of the Ministry of Health and UNAIDS to eliminate AIDS as a public health problem by 2030.
Infectious diseases specialty
The minister has also addressed the creation of the infectious diseases specialty and has announced that, within the specialization working group in Health Sciences, created at the request of the Human Resources Commission of the SNS, one of the subgroups is developing the proposal to establish the Infectious specialty and present it to the Human Resources Commission, following the provisions of Royal Decree 589/2022, of July 19.
Work has resumed with the subgroup of autonomous communities, which is collaborating with the Ministry of Health to study this issue and transfer the proposal to the Human Resources Commission, in order to initiate the procedure for the creation of this specialty.
Source: Ministry of Health
