New AIDS cases are up sharply in North Africa and the Middle East — areas where the virus is difficult to contain due to stigma — despite global infection rates having fallen by 35 percent, BusinessStandard reports.

The rise in new HIV infections in the Middle East and North Africa is a worrying trend, according to U.N. AIDS chief Michel Sidibe, who spoke Friday on the sidelines of a regional HIV/AIDS conference.

The epidemic remains very concentrated, the report said. The vast majority of cases are in the migrant, homosexual, sex worker and drug addict communities.

“There are regions we are worried about, notably the Middle East and North Africa, where a relatively quick rise in the number of new infections has been observed. The virus in these regions is difficult to contain,” Sidibe said.

The U.N. defines North Africa as including seven countries or territories: Algeria,
Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

With 225,000 people infected and 22,000 new cases in 2013, “the epidemic is not huge, but what is worrying is above all the trend… In just a few years we’ve gone from 10,000 people infected to 225,000,” he said.

Access to treatment across the region is very poor, Sidibe said. Medical coverage in the Middle East is 18 percent compared to around 80 percent in some African countries ravaged by the disease.

In the Middle East, just 11 percent of children with AIDS have access to treatment, he said.

Among the main obstacles to tackling the problem in the region are the “very strong stigma and discrimination” towards people at risk and “all the politics and laws” that penalise the same people, he added.

The UNAIDS official said there has been some progress with governments taking the problem seriously. The Arab League adopted its first strategy for combating the virus and a convention aimed at protecting people living with HIV but these must still be ratified by different member states.

“I don’t think the rest of the world is more tolerant than the Arab world, I believe it’s a problem of approach, that they will get there,” Sidibe said.