Totally, from 1987 to 20 November 2007 there have been registered 1232 HIV-infected people in Azerbaijan; the number of deaths in this period is 192 people. However, on the 1-st of December, the international day of struggle against HIV/AIDS, there has been voiced a concern that the real number of HIV-infected people is much larger as people, being afraid of the stigma, do not pass the tests. (03-DEC-07)

Written by Shahla Ismailova/HRH Baku on the basis of information from Echo newspaper, Novosti-Azerbaijan, Day Az

Activities
On the international day, Hagigat Kadirova, the director of Republican Center on struggle against AIDS, reported on situation with HIV/AIDS in Azerbaijan. According to her, the HIV/AIDS is one of the most actual problems in Azerbaijan and the Ministry of Health of Azerbaijan Republic sets this problem as a priority, implementing a number of measures to address the problem. Among the arrangements is the campaign “Be active in the struggle against AIDS”, strengthening of the system of epidemiological control and implementation of the project on investigating the factors on HIV/AIDS raise.

Statistics
Reporting on the number of HIV-infected people, Hagigat Kadirova stated that from 1987 to 20 November 2007, there had been recorded 1232 HIV-infected people in total, 56 of which are foreigners and 1176 citizens of Azerbaijan. The total number of AIDS deaths is 192, 44 of which occurred in 2007. H.Kadirova also commented on 300 new cases of HIV infected people, 299 of which are Azerbaijanis and one is a foreigner; 254 of them are men and 45 are women.

The director of the Republic Center of Struggle against AIDS stated that the age of the HIV-infected people is between 20 and 49 and one third of them are labor migrants, working in Ukraine, the Russian Federation and other countries. The investigation also showed that the HIV-infected people as a rule also suffer from other infection, such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, syphilis.

Reality
As a matter of fact, AIDS is more spread in Baku, Sumgayit, Ali-Bayramly and other cities of Azerbaijan, however, people are still unaware of this disease in the regions. Nevertheless, despite of the official statistics, it is considered that the number of HIV/AIDS infected people is much larger in reality, as the majority of people do not pass test on HIV/AIDS and those who are aware of their infection do not get registered for the stigma in society.