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Survey shows drop in HIV/AIDS rates

    JOHANNESBURG

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Burkina Faso is more optimistic after new data suggested a decline in HIV/AIDS rates over the past year.

    The country's 2004 sentinel survey, based on the voluntary testing of pregnant women at ante-natal clinics, found that the current AIDS prevalence rate of 4.2 percent represented a sharp fall from the 6.5 percent indicated in the 2003 survey.

    "We are optimistic because the stabilisation we are seeing today is a result of a reasonable change in behaviour," the WHO representative in Burkina Faso, Dr Mohamed Hacen, told the UN news service, PlusNews.

    Although the figures were encouraging, health experts warned that the survey results still gave no grounds for complacency.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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