While the number of deaths worldwide from HIV and AIDS has been steadily decreasing in recent years, the number of people being diagnosed with HIV every year remains largely unchanged, a new study has revealed.

The findings are based on an analysis of the Global Burden of Disease 2015 (GBD 2015). This provides a comprehensive analysis of HIV incidence, prevalence and deaths for 195 counties between 1980 and 2015.

New GBD estimates revealed that while deaths from HIV and AIDS have fallen steadily from a peak in 2005, 2.5 million were newly infected with HIV in 2015 - a figure that has not changed substantially over the last decade.

The study noted that the number of people living with HIV has steadily increased, from 27.9 million in 2000 to 38.8 million in 2015. Annual deaths meanwhile have been falling steadily, from a peak of 1.8 million in 2005 to 1.2 million in 2015.

This has largely been due to a wider availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART). The study noted that the proportion of people living with HIV who are on ART has jumped significantly in recent years. In 2005, just 6% of men with HIV were on ART. By 2015, this figure had risen to 38%. During the same period, the number of women with HIV on ART rose from 3% to 42%.

"Although scale-up of antiretroviral therapy and measures to prevent mother-to-child transmission have had a huge impact on saving lives, our new findings present a worrying picture of slow progress in reducing new HIV infections over the past 10 years," commented the study's lead author, Dr Haidong Wang, of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Within Europe, the highest number of new infections in 2015 occurred in Russia, the Ukraine, Spain, Portugal and the UK.

Last year, three in four new infections worldwide - that is 1.8 million cases - were in sub-Saharan Africa.

The researchers pointed out that developmental assistance for HIV and AIDS ‘is stagnating' and health resources in many low-income countries ‘are expected to plateau over the next 15 years'. As a result, governments and international agencies will have scale up their efforts if they are to realise the goal of ending AIDS by 2030.

Details of these findings are published in journal, The Lancet HIV.