299 new cases of HIV infection were registered in the Sughd province last year, bringing a total number of the officially registered HIV sufferers in the province to 2,077, Farrukh Maqsoudzoda, the head of the Sughd health directorate, told reporters in Khujand, the capital of the Sughd province, on February 6.
In 2016, 219 new HIV-sufferers, including 126 men and 93 women, were registered in the region, according to him.
Meanwhile, 167 of new HIV-sufferers registered last year are men and the remaining 132 are women.
“31 HIV sufferers died in the Sughd province in 2017 and 33 HIV sufferers died in the region in 2016,” Maqsoudzoda noted.
“Of the HIV-sufferers registered in the region last year, 34.8 percent are people aged 30 to 39, 25 percent are people aged 20 to 24, 3.7 percent are children aged 5 to 14 and 3.7 percent are children under the age of 4,” the Sughd health official said.
He further added that 49 HIV-sufferers registered in the region last year or 16.4 percent contracted the virus through injection drug use. Sexual contact was the transmission route for 75.2 percent of HIV cases (225), mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV accounted for 6.4 percent of HIV cases (19) registered in 2017, and the cause of transmission of HIV in four cases is unknown.
In Tajikistan, the first HIV infection case was officially registered in the northern province of Sughd in 1991.
