HIV/AIDS cases in Phl on the rise

The Department of Health (DOH) has registered 174 cases of HIV I December 2010, the highest number of cases reported in a month since the agency opened the Philippine HIV and AIDS registry in 1984.

In a report, the DOH said the new cases brought to 6,015 the number of recorded HIV/AIDS cases in the country. This is 38 percent higher than 126 cases registered in December 2009.

Rep. Arnel Ty of the party-list group LPG Marketers Association who is the author of a House resolution pushing for a review of the 1998 AIDS Prevention and Control Law to find new ways to reinforce the fight against the highly infectious disease, and improve the living conditions of victims, said the newly diagnosed infection bring to 1,591 the combined number of new HIV cases detected in the 12 months of 2010 – almost double the 835 discovered in the whole of 2009.

The DOH noted that “the 20-29 year (62 percent) are group had the most number of cases and 57 percent (98) of the reported cases were from the National Capital Region.”

The report further confirmed the DOH’s observation that injecting drug users is the sector to watch out for in the fight against HIV/AIDS. A total of 168 cases have acquired the AIDS virus through sexual contacts

One of the new cases, 14 are overseas Filipino workers and all of them males.

According to DOH, a total of 6,015 HIV cases were recorded from 1984 to 2010 and 857 of them have progressed into AIDS.

Last year, the DOH had sounded the alarm on HIV/AIDS anew after discovering that the injecting drug users were already contributing to cases.

The DOH said a contaminated needle being used by a drug abuser is often shared by four to six individuals, thus, spreading the virus faster than sexual contacts.

The Philippine National AIDS Council also previously warned that HIV cases in the country could hit 46,000 by 2015, unless effective strategies are put in place to check the spread of the disease. –Philippine Star