Philippines’ alarming HIV surge ‘highest in the world’, with youth hit hard

For Chris*, a 25-year-old university student in Manila, it began with an unusual rash on his chest. “At first I thought it was just a rash from a soap my mum bought me,” he told This Week in Asia.

Days later, he would frequently feel fatigued, and suffer from fever and chills at night. When a dermatologist ruled out allergies as the cause of his skin rash, the doctor suggested that he get tested for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

The Department of Health, in a press conference last month, said it had logged more than 3,000 new cases with 82 deaths as of March this year. A third of cases were aged 15 to 24 and 46 per cent were 25 to 34, it said.

The agency estimates that nearly 130,000 people live with HIV in the Philippines, which is still low for a country with a 110 million population, according to Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa.

“It’s the new cases that are really high, 55 new cases a day. We are the highest in the world,” Herbosa told reporters on May 22, adding that younger people were driving the surge.

HIV remains incurable. Only 64 per cent of those with HIV are on antiretroviral therapy, which helps lower their viral load until it is undetectable, enabling them to live longer and normal lives.

According to the latest available data from the UN programme UNAIDS, about 6.5 million people live with HIV in the Asia-Pacific. The region accounted for 23 per cent of new HIV infections globally in 2022, with 26 per cent of cases aged 15 to 24.

While total HIV infections across the region declined by 14 per cent from 2010 to 2022, the Philippines reported a 237 per cent spike in annual cases from 2010 to 2020, making it the country with the fastest-growing caseload in the Asia-Pacific.

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HIV cases in the