Portugal Has 10 Percent HIV Infection Rate Among Drug Users: EU Agency

Portugal has 10 percent HIV infection rate among drug users: EU agency

LISBON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) — Around 10 percent of Portuguese intravenous drug users are infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, European Union experts said on Thursday.

“Portugal reported a very high rate of new infections with 88 new infection cases per million citizens,” the European Rapporteur for Drugs and Drug Dependency (OEDT) said in a report published on Thursday, based on 2003 data.

The OEDT said that Portugal had 33 AIDS cases per million citizens in 2003, a number which has been falling since 1999, as many HIV carriers have not developed into full-blown AIDS.

The European Drug Information Agency said in a report on Thursday that “indices of newly-diagnosed cases remained at low levels in recent years,with the exception of Portugal”.

The OEDT said that while AIDS infection statistics showed some reduction, the news about hepatitis remained very bad. A very large percentage of intravenous drug users are infected with hepatitis B and C only a few years after they began injecting.

Almost 5 million people were infected with HIV globally in 2005, taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, according to UN data.

The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has killed more than 25 million people in the world since it was first found in 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history.