Although Spain has managed to reduce new HIV diagnoses in the last decade, the delay in detecting the disease remains a critical public health problem, according to the latest report from the National Epidemiology Center of the Carlos III Health Institute. In 2023, 3,196 new cases were registered, consolidating a downward trend that began in 2013 in the face of the uncontrolled rise in other sexually transmitted diseases. However, the report focuses on a persistent problem: late diagnosis, which affects about half of cases and increases significantly with age.
Almost half of the people diagnosed with HIV in 2023, 48.7%, received the diagnosis late, meaning that the infection had already advanced significantly. Furthermore, this late diagnosis increases with age, while among those under 25 years of age, late diagnosis occurred in 33.4% of cases, this figure rises to 61.5% in people over 50 years of age, who They were mostly infected through heterosexual relationships. The stigma here operates in the opposite way: as these groups register fewer cases, they are not expected to have the virus. And that makes it difficult to identify it before.
The main route of transmission continues to be sexual, representing 80.7% of cases. In this context, men who have sex with men (MSM) account for 55% of diagnoses, followed by heterosexual relationships (25.7%) and injection drug use (1.7%).
The analysis also highlights that inequalities in access to diagnosis are also significant: 49.8% of new diagnoses correspond to people born outside of Spain, with the percentage even higher among women (61.6%).
A reverse trend
While HIV shows a decline, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia are booming. According to the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network (RENAVE), gonorrhea cases have increased by 42.6% between 2021 and 2023, reaching record numbers. The same occurs with syphilis, which in 2023 registered 24.1% more cases than two years ago.
The Ministry of Health has indicated that STIs “are a major public health problem both due to their magnitude and their complications and consequences if early diagnosis and treatment are not carried out,” linking this increase to global trends and the improvement of health systems. surveillance. However, the proposal by Mónica García’s team to distribute free condoms for young people, announced a year ago to alleviate the increase in STIs, remains unimplemented.
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