MEXICO CITY – Mexico has met the U.N. Millennium Development Goal that demands that countries “halt and begin to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDS” before 2015, the Health Secretariat said.

“The infection rate for HIV is 0.4 percent” at this time, below the 0.6 percent target set by the World Health Organization, or WHO, for Mexico, Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said in a statement.

Currently, about 70 percent of the people requesting treatment for HIV-AIDS in Mexico “arrive without symptoms of the disease, which increases life expectancy by at least 25 years,” Cordova said.

Some years ago, 95 percent of the Mexicans who requested treatment for the first time already showed symptoms of the disease, for which there is no cure although anti-retroviral medications exist that can prolong life, in many cases for years.

Treatment against HIV-AIDS in Mexico is free and is currently offered at 57 specialized clinics to 30,000 of the 60,000 people in this country living with HIV.

The number of HIV-positive people “is three times less than in the United States, half of that ... (in) Guatemala and a third of that (for) Belize,” Cordova said.

Mexico spends about 2 billion pesos ($155 million) each year on fighting the disease.

In August 2008, Mexico hosted the 17th International Conference on AIDS, a meeting that contributed to breaking down stigmas and highlighting the achievements in the struggle against the illness.