The Ministry of Health  has released its 2017 Global AIDS Monitoring Report. The 2016 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS report reveals  alarming statistics about HIV/AIDS in the country. 

The comprehensive overview of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in The Bahamas showed that between 1985 and 2015, 13,449 persons were HIV positive. 

According to reports, over a third of those cases or 35 per cent have since died of AIDS. 

At the end of 2015, 8,667 people were listed as living with HIV as determined through surveillance methods.

This means that roughly 1 in 50 persons in The Bahamas in 2015 was HIV positive.

In 2015, 226 persons were diagnosed with HIV in The Bahamas, which represented a 43 per cent decrease from the reported number of 396 in 2006. 

Most of these cases or 84 per cent had not progressed to AIDS by the end of 2015. 

New diagnoses in men exceeded the diagnoses in women, while persons aged 30-39, accounted for the largest age group of new diagnoses at 25 per cent.

Although new diagnoses have decreased among most demographic groups, cases among 15-24 year olds increased by 38 per cent between 2006 with 34 cases and 47 cases in 2015. 

Cases among males in this age group tripled between 2006 with 11 cases and 27 cases in 2015. 

Between 2006 and 2015, 1,155 persons died of AIDS-related causes in The Bahamas, with an average of 116 deaths per year. 

The age-adjusted death rate decreased from 48 to 10 deaths per 100,000 persons in this time period.