The majority of the people in the United States infected with HIV live in the South, shows a report released Monday.

The nonprofit Southern AIDS coalition, a group of HIV/AIDS advocates trying to augment funding for prevention and treatment options, assigns the South's uneven impact of HIV/AIDS cases to increasing infection rates together with insufficient financial support and resources, whose influence on health care systems is catastrophic.

This report carried out to highlight where most people live and die from AIDS showed that among those Southern US states most affected, Florida is leading with 35,723 people infected with the Human immunodeficiency virus and 46,663 people living with the acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Some data from “Southern States Manifesto Update 2008: HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the South” says that among the 15 states with the highest new HIV diagnosis rates, nine are Southern. No less than 40 percent of new infections are in the South. The report also shows that deaths caused by AIDS pandemic decreased or were stable in other areas of the country from 2001 to 2005, but increased about 14 percent in the South. Nevertheless, the number of deaths in the South decreased in 2006.

Health officials and activists aim at achieving a set of goals in the coming 5 years. Decreasing the HIV infection rates in the South by 25 percent and implementing CDC testing recommendations in the same area are among these targets, as well as increasing sex education efforts and raising the number of people aware of their HIV, sexually transmitted disease of hepatitis infection.