Brasília, 11/25/2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The number of AIDS cases registered annually has been stable in Brazil since 2000, reports the Ministry of Health. Over the last two years (up to September of this year), there was a total of 19,373 new cases of AIDS (5,762 this year, and 13,611 last year). For the sake of comparison, in the 1990s, there was an average of 25,000 new cases per year.

Since the 1980s, when the problem began, there have been 277,141 registered cases of AIDS in Brazil. Out of that total, almost two-thirds were men (197,340). (AB)