Epress.am News from Armenia
From 1988 till Dec. 1, 2010, in Armenia, there have been 956 cases of HIV infected Republic of Armenia citizens, 149 of which were registered in 2009, reads a UN report.
In Armenia, more men than women have been infected with the virus: 688 men (which is 72% of all cases) compared with 268 women (28%). Twenty (2%) of those infected with HIV have been children.
About 58% of HIV-infected in Armenia are from the 25–39 age group.
The main forms of HIV transmission are through heterosexual sex (51.4%) and through intravenous drug use (39.5%). Other than these forms of transmitting the virus, there are also cases of transmission through homosexual sex, mother-to-child, and blood transfusions.
All those infected with HIV through drug use in Armenia were male, the majority of which temporary lived in, and most likely then contracted the virus, in Russia or the Ukraine. While nearly all the women infected with the virus contracted it through sexual intercourse (98.4%).
Four hundred sixty cases of those infected with the HIV virus (of which 108 were women and 10 were children) have been diagnosed with AIDS, 84 of which in 2009. Since the beginning of the epidemic in Armenia, there have been 228 cases of people dying from HIV/AIDS, of which 38 were women and 4 were children.
The highest number of HIV infected cases were registered in Yerevan (402 cases), which is 42.1% of all recorded cases. Second place for the highest number of registered cases in Armenia goes to Shirak marz (province) at 11.3% of all cases.