DUSHANBE, September 30, 2009, Asia-Plus — 173 new HIV infection cases have been detected in Tajikistan since the beginning of this year bringing a total number of officially registered HIV sufferers in the country to 1,595, Murod Ruziyev, the director of the Republican AIDS Center, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to him, injecting drug addiction is still the main source of HIV transmission in Tajikistan. “Injecting drug users (IDUs) currently constitute some 50-60 percent of the overall number of people living with HIV in the country,” said Ruziyev, “As far as labor migrants are concerned, they constitute 10 percent of the total number of officially registered HIV sufferers in Tajikistan.”
He noted that the HIV cases among labor migrants were detected during their return home. “It is to be noted that not all of them contracted the disease through sexual contacts. Many of them are IDUs who took to narcotics while working outside the country,” the director said.
