Pavlodar HIV cases on the rise

The number of people infected with Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) in Pavlodar, the administrative centre of Pavlodar Region, northern Kazakhstan, has reached 51 after the confirmation of a number of new cases, Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency reported on Friday. It quoted the regional centre for preventing and fighting AIDS as saying that the presence of HIV had been confirmed in new blood samples taken from three people in Pavlodar. Since May, 34 cases of HIV had been confirmed in Pavlodar, a city of 300,000 residents, after a HIV-positive drug addict deliberately tried to spread the infection, the report said. The number of HIV-infected people could reach 100 by the end of the year, it added. In a population of some 16.3 million people, Kazakhstan had some 3,500 adults and children living with AIDS at the end of 1999, according to UNAIDS statistics. There were fewer than 100 women (14-49 years), and fewer than 100 children (0-15 years), among the estimated 3,500 cases, which had given rise to a cumulative death toll since the beginning of the epidemic of 110. The adult rate of HIV/AIDS was 0.04 percent at the end of 1999, UNAIDS stated in its year 2000 update on HIV/AIDS in Kazakhstan. The pattern of disease indicated that HIV patients were predominantly among intravenous drug-users (IDUs), especially men between 20 and 34 years, female IDUs and homosexual/bisexual men. [for further details, see UNAIDS’ epidemiological fact sheet at: http://www.unaids.org/hivaidsinfo/statistics/june00/fact_sheets/pdfs/kazakhstan.pdf]