New HIV infections have declined by 17 percent globally over the past eight years, showing efforts to curb the spread of the world’s deadliest infectious disease are working, a United Nations report said.

About 2.7 million people became infected with the AIDS- causing virus last year, compared with 3.2 million in 2001, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization said in their annual update on the epidemic published today. The number of people living with the disease rose to 33.4 million from 29 million in the same period, as antiretroviral drugs extended lives.

About 2 million people die from AIDS-related causes each year, making it a bigger killer than tuberculosis or malaria, according to WHO figures. The report shows that while efforts to prevent infections have made an impact, they aren’t keeping pace with changing transmission patterns. In China, heterosexual transmission has overtaken injecting drug use as the main means of spreading the virus, the report said.

“If we do a better job of getting resources and programs to where they will make most impact, quicker progress can be made and more lives saved,” Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said in a statement.

New infections in sub-Saharan Africa, which has almost 7 in 10 of the world’s HIV cases, have decreased 15 percent since 2001, the report said. There were 25 percent fewer cases in East Asia last year than eight years ago, according to the report.