Quebec researchers say HIV awareness campaigns need to use social networking sites to reach younger people. (Canadian Press)HIV experts are urging aggressive safe-sex education to reduce infection rates among a younger generation of Canadians who, they say, don't fear the virus given advances in drug treatment.

Researchers in Quebec spoke out about public education and HIV infection trends on Tuesday to mark World AIDS Day.

In Quebec, the number of new cases of human immunodeficiency virus did not drop last year, despite a reduction in AIDS-related deaths. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Quebecers are infected with the virus, said Dr. Mark Wainberg, an HIV researcher at McGill University.

The tendency can be explained by the development of sophisticated drug treatments now commonly available in Canada, said Wainberg, who heads the university's AIDS centre.

"There is absolutely no doubt that there are a lot of people out there who are not practising safe sex because they are aware that even if they get infected, there will be drugs out there that will do the job," he told CBC News.

Today, people living with HIV can expect a long lifespan if they are diagnosed early and follow a strict course of antiretroviral drug therapy, a reality that may lead younger people to take more risks in their sexual lives, said Réjean Thomas, a physician who practises at a Montreal clinic specializing in sexually transmitted infections.

"AIDS is no more a disease that we talk a lot about," and current education campaigns are not reaching their target audiences, said Thomas, who works at the Clinique l'Actuel. "We're seeing an explosion in the last five years of sexually transmitted disease."

"The young generation that are 18 years old have not heard about AIDS that much, because they were eight when [antiretroviral] treatment arrived," Thomas continued. "In our clinic, about 30 per cent of the HIV infections are [among] young people under 30 years old."

Condoms are still crucial to keeping infection rates in check, and public health campaigns need to stress that even more, Thomas said.

In Montreal, several events were planned Tuesday to mark World AIDS Day, including free and anonymous HIV testing at the Head and Hands Health Centre in the neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.