Azerbaijan, Lankaran, 31 January / corr. Trend P. Aliyeva / Two cases of the HIV disease have been discovered in the Lankaran region of Azerbaijan. Ramiali Ishibov, the head of the Regional Laboratory Group of HIV Diagnostics of the Lankaran region said to Trend.
Some 35 people were infected with HIV in 2007 and 8 people died from AIDS. The deceased included one woman and seven men. Of the 118 people infected with AIDS who were registered in Lankaran, 98 of them are men and 20 were women. The ages of 71 of the victims ranged from 31 to 50 years.
Some 441 cases of the HIV infection were registered in Azerbaijan in 2007, 437 being Azerbaijani citizens and four foreigners. 382 people out of the registered 437 Azerbaijani citizens (87,4%) were men and 55 (12,6%) were women. A total of 271 people (62%), which was the majority of cases, were infected through drug injections. The number of the people who died of AIDS in 2007 was 48.
In all, 1,379 people infected with the HIV disease were registered with the Republican Center for the Fight Against AIDS from 1987 to 2007. Some 59 of them were visitors, 1,320 were Azerbaijani citizens. 1,117 (84. 6%) Azerbaijani citizens infected with HIV were men and 203 (15.4%) were women. The general number of people dying of AIDS totalled 195. However the number of victims who are already in the AIDS stage has totaled 294.
Blood samples were sent to the Republican Center for the Fight Against AIDS to be analyzed in order to confirm the HIV infection, Ibishov said.
According to the United Program on HIV/AIDS of UN (UNAIDS) and World Health Organization (WHO), 2.5 mln people were infected with HIV all over the world in 2007, the number of those living with the HIV/AIDS totals to 33.2 mln.