Two women may have infected dozens of men in Khatlon province with HIV during a short period of time.
Khatlon governor Qurbon Hakimzoda remarked this at the congress of women leaders in Bokhtar on November 28.
“Two women may have infected dozens of men with HIV in the cities of Bokhtar and Nurek within a short period of time,” the governor said.
Hakimzoda noted that that case had been discussed at his meeting with administrators of the city of Nurek and he had ordered them to take measures to prevent such cases in the future.
The head of the Khatlon AIDS Center, Ilyosiddin Saidov, told Asia-Plus that they had tested more than 20 men who had had sexual intercourse with those women. “The tests were negative. However, we will test them once again in six months, because they may be infected but tests did not detect that,” Saidov said.
If those men were really infected, criminal proceedings will be instituted against those women, Saidov added.
Meanwhile, an antigen/antibody test performed by a laboratory on blood from a vein can usually detect HIV infection 18 to 45 days after an exposure. Antigen/ antibody tests done with blood from a finger prick can take longer to detect HIV (18 to 90 days after an exposure).
According to Saidov, 338 new HIV-infection cases hav been officially registered in the province over the first ten months of this year, bringing a total number of people living with HIV in the area to 3,654.
Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission. Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the U.S., have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission or exposure, charging those accused with criminal transmission of HIV. Others, including the United Kingdom, charge the accused under existing laws with such crimes as murder, fraud (Canada), manslaughter, attempted murder, or assault.
