HIV epidemic could hit Asia-Pacific drug users: UN.

Kuala Lumpur: Asia-Pacific countries risk a full-blown HIVepidemic among drug users unless governments do more to keepyouths off drugs and make clean needles available, a UNofficial said today.Injecting drug use or IDU fuels at least 70 per cent of HIVtransmission in places such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia,Myanmar and Vietnam, said Prasada Rao, Asia-Pacific directorof UNAIDS, the UN body fighting HIV/AIDS.Those countries, and others including Bangladesh, India, Nepaland Pakistan, "have a very severe IDU epidemic almost in theoffing, about to break out in the open," Rao said in aninterview at the start of a two-day UNAIDS meeting here.The forum involved drug abuse and disease preventionauthorities from more than 40 countries."We want to caution the countries not to take an IDU epidemiclightly".Countries such as India, where IDU-related infections areconcentrated in specific zones, could contain the problem ifthe national leadership ensures strategies are properlycarried out in affected provinces, Rao said."China has a much bigger challenge, because that (IDU) iswhat's driving the infections, much more compared to India,"he said.India had about 5.7 million HIV/AIDS-infected people last year,more than two-thirds of the Asia-Pacific total. The problemthere is largely sparked by the sex trade, except in placessuch as the country's northeast, where most transmissionscome from needles shared by heroin addicts.UNAIDS estimates that some 1 million of the 8.3 millionpeople living with HIV last year in the Asia-Pacific regionwere infected because of IDU.

Source://The Hindu, July 04,2006

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