UNDP to help Philippines combat AIDS threat

The UN Development Programme said Tuesday it will help the Philippines fight rising HIV infections, which reached record monthly levels for the country this year.

A Filipina medical technologist at a social hygiene clinic in Manila extracts blood for an HIV screening test. The UN Development Programme has said it will help the country fight rising infections of the virus, which reached record monthly levels for the country this year.

"All the main ingredients for an epidemic are present in the country. First, HIV transmission through unprotected sex accounts for 89 percent of reported cases," the agency said in a statement.

Condom use among the most at-risk, including homosexual men, female sex workers and their male clients, remained below 90 percent, it added.

Manila and the UNDP are on Thursday to launch a three-year programme on "mitigating the negative impacts of HIV and AIDS on human development," the organisation said.

A record 89 new HIV cases were registered in May, bringing the total for 2009 to 322.

The government estimates that in 2007 there were 7,490 people in the Philippines living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, up from about 6,000 in 2002.