Report on the Global HIV/AIDS epidemic

Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic - June 2000
Injecting drug use: the other HIV epidemic
Globally, sex between men and women is by far the most common way of passing
on HIV. But a second epidemic drives the virus in many, if not most, countries outside of Africa. That is the epidemic among men and women who inject drugs. Over
half of all AIDS cases are attributed to injecting drug use in countries including
Bahrain, Georgia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Spain and Yugoslavia, and over twofifths in Argentina and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Figure 27 shows the proportion
of HIV infections attributable to drug use in a number of countries. In total, 114 countries and territories had reported HIV transmission between injecting drug users by
mid-1999, up from just 52 seven years earlier.
Figure 27. Proportion of all new HIV infections that are in injecting drug
users, selected countries, 1998-1999
% 100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Canada China Latvia Malaysia Moldova Russian Ukraine Viet Nam
Federation
Source: National AIDS Programmes
Injection of any sort is an even more efficient way of spreading HIV than sexual intercourse. Since injecting drug users are often linked in tight networks and commonly
share injecting equipment with other people without cleaning it, HIV can spread very
rapidly in these populations. Because injecting drug use is illegal in most countries,
it is hard to know exactly how many people inject drugs and how many share their
equipment; it is harder still to gauge how many are infected with HIV. Many of the
estimates of HIV infection rates among injecting drug users come from tests of drug
users who have been arrested or who are registered at treatment centres. However,
information collected by outreach services - which take HIV prevention and other

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