WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (AFP) - The number of people dying from AIDS in the United States is still falling but much more slowly, the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

The decline in the AIDS mortality rate -- the number of AIDS sufferers who die as a percentage of those who have the disease -- was 20 percent in 1997/8 compared to 42 percent in 1996/7.

The disease claimed some 17,047 victims in 1998, compared to 21,222 in 1997 and 49,351 in 1995, the CDC said.

Researchers said the slowing decline was due to several factors including HIV-infected people who, unaware of their infection, are not getting treatment early enough to benefit, drug treatment failure, or patients' difficulty in sticking to the treatment regime.

The decline in the rate of HIV infection, year-on-year, was 18 and 11 percent in 1996/7 and 1997/8 respectively, the CDC said in the statement.

The number of new cases reported in 1998 was 44,289, down from 49,667 in 1997 and 63,734 in 1995, according to the Atlanta, Georgia-based organisation.

The majority of these cases were among African Americans, especially young gay men and heterosexual women, the CDC said in a statement.

Separately, the CDC unveiled a new testing technique which it said would enable experts "to understand the dynamics of the epidemic's spread and predict future shifts in the epidemic."

Called STARHS (the Serologic Testing Algorithm for Recent HIV Seroconversions), the technique allows researchers to distinguish new HIV infections from long-standing infections using a blood specimen.

It uses two HIV antibody tests to pinpoint whether the infection occurred within the last 4-6 months.

According to researchers in San Francisco, for example, the test identified a recent increase in new HIV infections among gay men seeking anonymous testing in that city.

"This new testing technique provides us with a snapshot of the epidemic's leading edge," said Robert Janssen, Deputy Director of CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention Surveillance and Epidemiology.

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