DUSHANBE, April 6, Asia-Plus – In 2006, 55 people in Tajikistan died of AIDS, Health Minister Ranokhon Abdurahmonova announced at a news conference in Dushanbe on April 6.
The news conference was organized on occasion of a World Health Day, which marked on April 7, 2007. The main theme of the news conference was international health security.
Representatives from the ministry of health (MoH), committee for emergency situations (CES), as well as international organizations active in Tajikistan, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and some UN agencies, attended the news conference.
According to the minister, 710 HIV sufferers have to date been officially registered in Tajikistan. “In 2006 alone, 204 new cases of HIV infection were reported in the country,” Abdurahmonova said, noting that 86 percent of HIV-infected in Tajikistan are people aged under 39.
Speaking to journalists, Santino Severoni, the head of the WHO CO in Tajikistan, named labor migration as one of factors contributing to spread of the disease in Tajikistan. The WHO CO head noted that epidemics, pandemics and other healthcare problems may also affect economic development of the country. In this connection, the nation should tighten sanitary-epidemiological supervision at the regional level and strengthen mechanisms of responding to disease outbreaks and disasters.
Journalists also raised the issue of the charity concert that was held in Copenhagen; the funds collected from the concert were supposed to be handed over to the republican children’s TB-treatment hospital.
The minister said that $25,000 made from the concert will go to providing repairs to that hospital. She added that the MoH also plans to organize a charity concert this year.
