 AFP / Diptendu Dutta 
 
 Indian volunteers and members of the West Bengal Voluntary Health Association (WBVHA) light candles in the shape of a red ribbon during the closing ceremony of an AIDS awareness campaign in Siliguri on December 2, 2013 
 
 HIV infections are rising among gay men in many parts of the world, the World Health Organization warned Friday, urging all men who have sex with men to take antiretroviral drugs to prevent infection. "We are seeing exploding epidemics in some of these key populations," he said, adding that these groups account for up to 50 percent of new cases of HIV infection. The WHO said studies estimate that female sex workers are 14 times more likely to have HIV than other women, gay men are 19 times more likely to have HIV than the general population, and transgender women are almost 50 times more likely than other adults to have HIV. AFP / Tony Karumba 
 
 A picture taken in Nairobi on May 9, 2013 shows a billboard promoting the use of condoms by a US-based Catholic group calling itself "Catholics for choice" 
 
 In its new recommendations for combatting the HIV/AIDS pandemic, published Friday, the UN health agency therefore for the first time "strongly recommends men who have sex with men consider taking antiretroviral medicines as an additional method of preventing HIV infection". Taking pre-exposure prophylaxis medication, for instance as a single daily pill combining two antiretrovirals, in addition to using condoms, has been estimated to cut HIV incidence among such men by 20-25 percent, WHO said, stressing that this could avert "up to one million new infections among this group over 10 years". These are men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender persons, specifically transgender women, persons who inject drugs and persons who are in prisons or other closed settings," Gottfried Hirnschall, director of the WHO's HIV department, told reporters at a briefing. Globally, transgender women and injecting drug users, for instance, are around 50 times more likely than the general population to contract HIV, while sex workers have a 14-fold higher chance of getting infected, WHO said. Some 35.3 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, but the rising number of patients reflects great strides in recent years in developing sophisticated HIV tests and combination AIDS drugs and getting them to many of those who need them to stay alive. The WHO report, released ahead of the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia, which begins on July 20, said that by the end of 2013, around 13 million people worldwide were taking AIDS drug treatment. "None of these people live in isolation," he said, pointing out that "sex workers and their clients have husbands, wives and partners. Some inject drugs. Many have children."
– HIV infections are "exploding" among gay men, according to the World Health Organization. In fact, the infection rates are so bad, the organization—for the first time—"strongly recommends men who have sex with men consider taking antiretroviral medicines as an additional method of preventing HIV infection," it announced today. Despite the attention drawn to HIV infections among gay men in the 1980s, WHO's HIV head tells AFP the younger generation is less focused on the disease when, in fact, gay men today are 19 times more likely to contract HIV than the general population. WHO notes that taking pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP—typically, two antiretrovirals combined into one daily pill—in addition to the use of condoms is estimated to cut HIV incidence among gay men by up to 25% or prevent "up to one million new infections among this group over 10 years." Al Jazeera America reports that when taken consistently, PrEP can cut the risk of HIV infection in high-risk groups with "universally poorer access to health services," including prostitutes and prisoners, by up to 92%. (In other news, a baby apparently "cured" of HIV has tested positive for the virus.)