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HIV/AIDS cases jump by 350% in Jambi
The number of people living with HIV/AIDS (ODHA) in Jambi has increased by more than 350 percent, with 953 people reported last year compared with 262 people in the previous year, an official has said
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The number of people living with HIV/AIDS (ODHA) in Jambi has increased by more than 350 percent, with 953 people reported last year compared with 262 people in the previous year, an official has said.
Head of the Infectious Diseases Control and Mitigation Office of Jambi Province, Azwar Djouhari, said that of the 953 people, 105 had developed AIDS.
Azwar said that, according to data from the province’s health agency, of the 262 people reported as living with HIV/AIDS in 2007, 86 had developed AIDS.
“It’s already become our collective problem,” he said, adding that the people with HIV/AIDS were living in 10 regencies and cities.
Azwar said HIV/AIDS could be spread through unsafe sex, needle-sharing and blood transfusions, as well as passing from pregnant women to their babies.
The highest incidence of HIV/AIDS infections in the province is among injecting drug users,
who account for about 61 percent of the whole, with 41 people reported as HIV positive, 66 people as having AIDS and 36 deaths last year, Azwar said.
He said 25.42 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS were infected through heterosexual intercourse and 6.78 percent from homosexual intercourse.
Of the whole, 1.69 percent were women infected by their husbands, and 0.1 percent were prenatal transmissions.
“So far we have not come across any cases of HIV/AIDS transmitted through blood transfusions,” he said.
Azwar said HIV/AIDS could be avoided through such means as abstaining from sexual intercourse, having only one sexual partner, using a condom and using sterile needles for injecting drugs, tattooing and body piercing.
“Don’t get infected and don’t infect others,” he said.
Azwar said people living with HIV/AIDS could live a normal life by taking antiretroviral drugs that suppressed the virus in their blood — until the virus reached an amount that could not be detected by a test.
Facts on HIV/AIDS in Jambi
- 61 percent of ODHA were infected through injecting drug user
- 25.42 percent of ODHA through heterosexual intercourse
- 6.78 percent from homosexual intercourse. 1.69 percent were women infected by their husbands,
- 0.1 percent were prenatal transmissions.
