Monitoring Desk
KABUL : Speakers at a seminar marking the World AIDS Day said 2523 people, including women and children were affected by the disease in Afghanistan.
Addressing the ceremony, health ministry official Dr Fida Muhammad Pekan said 75 percent of the AIDS patients were men while 25 percent of them were women. He went on to say that 54 AIDS patients were under 15 years of age.
Meanwhile, the UN said in a report that AIDS has affected about 36.7 million people throughout the world. More than one million of these patients died every year, it stated.
Addressing the ceremony in Kabul, Fida Muhammad Pekan said the health ministry had established facilities for treatment of AIDS in Kabul, Herat, Balkh, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Ghazni, Badakhshan, Kunar, Daikundi, Farah, Nimroz and Khost provinces. Similarly, he added that 11 centers of consultation had also been established in the country.
Wars, use of drugs, open borders, economic issues, low education level, domestic and foreign displaced people, unsafe transfer of blood and rising number of AIDS patients in Pakistan and Iran were the reasons of growing number of patients of this disease in Afghanistan.
The World Aids Day was celebrated in Kabul and other parts of the country.
According to Kandahar health department, 20 people were affected by AIDS in the province.
