HIV rates increasing among injecting drug users worldwide

Bradley Mathers and colleagues from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, used data gleaned from a number of peer-reviewed studies along with information from the United Nations agencies and international experts and have identified injected drug use in 148 countries.

In a study published in The Lancet, the team showed that HIV infections among these kind of users was over 40% in nine countries - Estonia, Ukraine, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal, Argentina, Brazil and Kenya.

Researchers say that these results suggest that there is both an increase in the number of injecting drug users worldwide and an increase in the rate of HIV infection among them. This suggests that, in countries where injecting drug use is not yet a problem, it would be sensible to educate people about both early, before they start the practice.

The researchers estimated that in 2007 nearly 16 million people around the world injected drugs - China, the United States and Russia had the largest number of such users - but there was little data from places in Africa amid concerns that a 'constellation of risk factors' exists there for the development of injecting drug use.

Southeast Asia, eastern Europe and Latin America are areas that are particularly worrying. The review showed big differences worldwide - in Britain 0.4% of people aged 15 to 64 injected drugs, with 2.3% of them estimated to be HIV positive.

In Spain the proportion of addicts is lower at 0.31% but nearly 40% of them have HIV, which the researchers say is the highest proportion in Europe, whereas Australia and New Zealand have both maintained a very low level of HIV infection even though they have more injected drug users - only 1.5% of Australian injecting drug users are HIV positive.