Of other major causes of death, mortality from respiratory diseases also reduced steeply in the 2000s, converging to the EU average. These trends partially reflect improvements in available treatments and public health policies related to smoking (see Section 5.1). However, since 2006 rates of newly reported HIV diagnoses have more than doubled, and in 2015 Malta recorded the third highest rate of newly reported HIV cases in the EU/EEA (ECOC, 20161 This increase is largely attributable to outbreaks among the men who have sex with men (MSM) community.