Azerbaijan, Lankaran / Тrend corr P. Aliyeva / Most of the HIV-carriers in Azerbaijan's Lankaran region are men aged between twenty to fifty, who were in Russia or the Ukraine in search of employment, the head of the HIV Laboratory Diagnostics at Lankaran's Hygiene and Epidemiology Centre, Ramiali Ibishev, said.
According to Ibishev, of those carrying HIV, 46% are drug addicts or their relatives are infected.
The number of HIV-carriers has been increasing since 1999. Some forty-six HIV-carriers were registered in 2004, eighty-three in 2006. Today they are almost 105. Women make up 18% of all HIV carriers. Two children under five are supposed to be infected. Twenty-three other carriers were exposed during the first nine months of 2007.
Five AIDS-infected people, one of them being a woman, died this year. So far there have been two cases when an entire family was registered as having been infected.