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#18
CIS and Russia lead the world for HIV infection
Interfax

Moscow, 27 November: The highest rate of the spread of AIDS/HIV has been registered in the CIS countries, as in a number of them, including Russia, the rate of people infected with the HIV virus has doubled annually in the last several years.

This information was circulated at the presentation of a new nongovernment organization, AIDS Foundation East-West, in Moscow on Tuesday [27 November].

According to the Russian Health Ministry, over 160,000 HIV cases were officially registered in Russia as of November 2001. From January to November 2001 alone, over 75,000 new cases of people with the HIV virus were registered in Russia.

In all of 2000, the number of new AIDS patients was 56,600 and the total number of HIV-infected people was under 86,000 by the end of last year.

According to estimates by the WHO and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, the real number of cases in any country is from five to 10 times more than official statistics data. Therefore, there are all grounds to assume that from 500,000 to 1m Russians are infected with HIV now.

If HIV continues to spread at the current rate, this figure could reach 5m people by 2005.

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