India red alert: The United States ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, warned this week that India could soon surpass South Africa as the country with the highest number of people with HIV/Aids in the world.
He quoted a US government report at a conference on Aids prevention in Madras. The report warned that 25-million Indians could be infected with HIV by 2010.
About 4-million Indians now have HIV, compared with 4,7-million South Africans.
The Indian government says its prevention programmes are working and says the rate of infection is stabilising. The government has recruited donor agencies to help it in the fight against Aids. The country has embarked on a range of programmes that vary from the distribution of cheap drugs to promoting awareness of Aids among schoolchildren.
Iran reveals figures: Ali Mansuri, a Health Ministry disease control officer in Iran, said this week that the country had identified more than 4 200 Aids cases. Other sources estimate the country has nearly 20 000 cases.
”We have so far identified 4 237 people infected with Aids, of whom 4 048 are men,” he said. ”At the moment, prisons full of drug addicts are the main centres for the spread of Aids.”
Official figures say that two-thirds of Iran’s prison population are dealers or consumers of drugs.
Source: Sapa