New York - The United Nations programme on HIV and AIDS said Friday that governments and healthcare services should study new patterns of HIV infections in order to make preventive programmes more effective.

UNAIDS said that as the pattern of an epidemic can change over time, analyses of its spread should be undertaken at regular intervals.

"Not only will this approach help prevent the next 1,000 infections in each community, but it will also make money for AIDS work more effective and help put forward a long-term and sustainable AIDS response," said UNAIDS director Peter Piot.

The realignment of HIV prevention programmes would be based on understanding why new infections occurred, he said.

UNAIDS said the new approach, which involves a combination of preventive measures, is a mix of behavioural, bio-medical and structural HIV prevention actions to suit each country's actions to fight the epidemic.

The UN said there are currently an estimated 33 million people living with AIDS and there were 2.7 million new infections in 2007. An estimated 2 million people died of AIDS-related causes last year.