295 new HIV/AIDS cases in June

MANILA, Philippines – Halfway through 2012 and the number of HIV/AIDS cases recorded by the Department of Health (DOH) for the year has surpassed the statistics in 2010, an official of the agency said Friday.

DOH Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag said that for June 2012, the Philippine HIV and AIDS Registry had recorded 295 new cases of HIV, including 16 AIDS cases. This brought to 1,600 the number of cases this year.

“This is one of the highest monthly new HIV cases in the country. We are on the second half of the year and we already have more than the 1,591 cases for the whole year of 2010,” Tayag said.

In 2011, 2349 cases HIV/AIDS cases were recorded.

Last March, the DOH recorded a total of 313 cases, the highest ever on a monthly basis since the registry started in 1984.

But according to Tayag, what alarms the DOH more is the number of injecting drug users (IDUs) who contracted the infection.

“What we are alarmed about is that for June, there were an additional 20 cases of injecting drug use. So all in all, there are 120 cases this year,” he said. The 20 new infections came from Cebu City.

From 1984 to 2008, there were only eight IDU-related HIV cases in the Philippines. But in 2009, the DOH had started recording cases in Cebu City and it has not stopped since.

In 2007, the DOH noticed a rising trend in the sector of men-having-sex-with-men (MSM). This pertains to gays and straight men who engage in sex with fellow men out of curiosity and for adventure.

The registry showed that the 295 new cases in June were 66 percent higher that the 178 cases during the same period in 2011.

While needle sharing among IDUs was the mode of transmission for 20 cases, the rest got infected through sexual contact. MSM was the “predominant type of sexual transmission” for 88 percent of the cases.

There was one death in June involving a 35-year-old man.

Metro Manila accounted for 58 percent of the 295 cases; followed by Calabarzon with 12 percent; Davao with 11 percent; Central Visayas with nine percent and Central Luzon with six percent. The age group 20-29 years old accounted for 56 percent of the cases. –Sheila Crisostomo, The Philippine Star