Despite global efforts to fight AIDS, the number of people who get infected is far outpacing the number of people who begin anti-retroviral drug treatments, according to a United Nations report issued Monday.

The U.N. health programs provided anti-retroviral treatment to an additional 1 million people in 2007. However, about 2.5 million people became infected with AIDS in the same year.

“Unless greater and swifter advances are made in reaching those who need essential services, the epidemic’s burden on households, communities and societies will continue to mount,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, as quoted by the Associated Press.

The figures were released on the eve of a high-level meeting at U.N. headquarters, which is called to review progress made since 2001, when the organization first launched programs worldwide in order to halt the spread of AIDS epidemic. The meeting scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday will host 8 presidents and more than 90 prime ministers, foreign ministers and health ministers.

Overall, the report showed a decline in global AIDS deaths and infections. An estimated 32.2 million people worldwide were living with HIV in December 2007 compared with 39.5 million people in 2006. Also, the annual rate of new infections seemed to have declined over the last decade. There were 2.5 million new infections in 2007 down from 3.2 million infections in 1998.

Half of all HIV infection are adult women, 61 percent of them being located in Africa’s sub-Saharan nations. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicenter of the global malady. Of the 32.2 million people living with HIV, about 22.5 are registered here, as well as 76 percent of those who die because of AIDS annually. Also 90 percent of all HIV positive children in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Because treatment against AIDS was made available in recent years, the number of AIDS deaths in 2007 was estimated at 2.1 million down from 3.9 million in 2001.

However, progress in fighting AIDS is “uneven” and the expansion of the epidemic itself is often outstripping the pace at which services are being brought to scale,” the report concluded.

“Every day, almost 7,000 people are needlessly infected with HIV because they do not have access to proven interventions to prevent transmission,” Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS, said.

Several causes believed to lead to new HIV infections include some health workers who continue to expose people to risk by using infected needles and blood; polygamy; prostitution; homosexuality and the list could go on.

Overall, “we must learn better to grasp how cultural norms and attitudes increase the risk of infection,” Ban Ki-moon concluded.

Officials attending the Tuesday meeting will also seek ways to stop tuberculosis, which is the most important medical complication of infection with HIV. Tuberculosis is also the No. 1 killer among HIV-positive people in Africa.

About 700,000 tuberculosis cases develop among HIV-positive people yearly, and this year an estimated 230,000 HIV-infected people will die from tuberculosis.

“There’s still a huge epidemic out there that still needs huge resources to win the battle,” Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, an international non-governmental group headquartered in Washington DC said.