The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has stressed that her department aims to eliminate AIDS as a public health problem by 2030 and has defended the creation of the speciality of infectious diseases.

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Health to allocate 10 million in 2024

Mónica García has opened the XXI National Congress on AIDS and STIs “The Ages of HIV”, held in Toledo and organised by the Spanish Interdisciplinary AIDS Society (SEISIDA), where she announced that her department will allocate 10 million euros in 2024 to fund condoms for young people aged 16 to 22.

In 2022, 2,956 new HIV diagnoses were reported. The number of new HIV diagnoses has been on a downward trend in recent years, “but we need the decline to be faster,” the minister said.

To this end, several combination prevention strategies have been put in place. One of them is HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, a measure whose public funding was authorised in November 2019, and which is implemented in all autonomous communities, with around 23,000 people on PrEP by the end of 2023.

This strategy is being carried out within the framework of the agreement between the Ministry of Health and SEISIDA to carry out activities to support the implementation and monitoring of HIV PrEP.

Another of these measures is the promotion of condom use, which, in addition to preventing HIV infection, prevents other sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies.

The current concern is due to the steady increase in sexually transmitted infections in recent years, with young women and men being more frequently affected.

For this reason, free condoms are being considered by the public system for young people with lower purchasing power, with 10 million euros for this year.

Situation
The minister stressed that SEISIDA is a model of multidisciplinary response, bringing together professionals from the social and health fields, patient associations and NGOs, as well as central and autonomous state administrations with the aim, shared with both the Spanish Ministry of Health and UNAIDS, of eliminating AIDS as a public health problem by 2030.

In Spain, there are currently approximately 150,000 people living with HIV, 92.5% of whom know their diagnosis, 96.6% are receiving antiretroviral treatment and, of these, 90.4% have an undetectable viral load.