Every fifth prisoner HIV-positive in East Kazakhstan

Every fifth prisoner serving a sentence in East-Kazakhstan oblast is HIV-positive, YK-news.kz reports. Over 2.2 thousand cases of HIV have been discovered over the 5 months of 2013. 49 convicts have already died from AIDS. The number of new cases of HIV infection exceeds the values of 2012 by 5 percent. The epidemiological situation with HIV in East Kazakhstan remains tense. The epidemiologist of the oblast Center for Prevention and Countering of AIDS Natalya Seleznyova said that the values were high for East-Kazakhstan Oblast. “This shows that the number of HIV-infected people is growing every year,” she said. A majority of HIV positive people are under 40 years old. 47 percent of them got infected through sexual contacts, another 50 percent are drug addicts. Convicts have always been a HIV risk group. “There are cases when convicts cut their veins and intentionally infect healthy people with their blood,” Seleznyova added. Over 18.4 thousand of HIV-positive people are registered in Kazakhstan as of May 2012. Over 3.6 thousand people have died of AIDS in Kazakhstan during the whole period since registration of the disease started.