More powerful drugs and greater access to care have cut new HIV infections worldwide by 17 percent in the past eight years.

In Florida, new HIV cases declined 6 percent between 1998 and 2007 (2008 numbers were not available).

Dr. Margaret Fischl, pioneering AIDS researcher at the University of Miami School of Medicine, called the decrease ``very good news.

``We're seeing the full impact of getting people tested and into care. But there's still a lot of work to do.''

Some of the greatest reductions came in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, where the world pandemic was at its worst, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Still, nobody was proclaiming victory. Nearly 2.7 million people, including 430,000 children, were newly diagnosed with HIV in 2008, the report said. Twenty-five million have died since HIV/AIDS was identified in 1981.

The news was less good in high-income countries, including the United States, which were only able to keep the new HIV infection rate stable. New HIV infections in the United States have hovered around 50,000 a year since 2000. In Europe, new HIV cases doubled between 2004 and 2007.

In Florida, the number of new HIV cases decreased 6 percent overall from 1998 to 2007, according to Spencer Lieb, senior epidemiologist for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS of the Florida Department of Health. AIDS deaths dropped from 1,746 in 2007 to 1,412 in 2008, he said.

``Still, it's too many,'' he said.

For years, Miami and Fort Lauderdale have ranked in the top five U.S. metropolitan areas for AIDS cases, sharing that status with San Francisco, New York City and Washington, D.C.

In the Caribbean, ``the regional rate of new HIV infections seems to have stabilized, except for Cuba, where prevalance is low but appears to be on the rise,'' according to the report.

The epidemic in Latin America remains stable, it noted. ``Latin America is primarily home to low-level and concentrated epidemics.''

Around the world, countries with the highest HIV rates showed the most improvement.

``In Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, there was a rapidly expanding epidemic. When they got treatment you could see a dramatic decline -- moreso than in the United States,'' Fischl said.

MEDICAL ADVANCES

A major factor in cutting HIV infections around the world is new drugs that prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies at birth.

``Potent antiretroviral therapy given to women who are pregnant literally stops infection of their children,'' said Fischl who, with colleagues, contributed to development of those drugs.

Daniel Halperin, an AIDS expert at Harvard University, said it was good news the rate of new infections was dropping and that access to AIDS drugs was helping to cut the death rate. Earlier this year, the United Nations announced four million people are now on life-saving AIDS drugs worldwide, a tenfold increase in five years.

As new drugs prolong lives for people with HIV, the number of people living in that status increases, experts say. Tuesday's report estimates there are now about 33.4 million people worldwide with HIV. In 2007, the figure was about 33.2 million.

SPENDING

With the U.N.'s confirmation that HIV now is declining in most countries, some experts said the report should change the spending habits of international donors.

Globally, HIV causes about 4 percent of all deaths, but gets about 23 cents of every public health dollar.

``We shouldn't let this single disease continue to distort overall global funding, especially when bigger killers like pneumonia and diarrhea in developing countries are far easier and cheaper to treat,'' said Philip Stevens, of International Policy Network, a London-based think tank.

That would be a mistake, Fischl said.

``This is not cured. We still see new infections in millions of people. The progress now is unmatched. To stop now would negate what took three decades to achieve.''

Associated Press medical writer Maria Cheng contributed to this report.