HIV Rates On The Rise In Iran - U.N. Official

HIV infection rates in Iran are increasing rapidly due both to a growing inflow of cheap heroin from Afghanistan.

HIV infection rates in Iran are increasing rapidly due both to a growing inflow of cheap heroin from Afghanistan and more sexually transmitted cases, according to a senior United Nations official.

Christian Salazar, the world body's coordinator on HIV in Iran, praised the country's "progressive and pragmatic" efforts in fighting the virus that causes AIDS, including a programme to hand out clean needles to drug addicts in prisons.

But he said the Islamic Republic now faced new challenges to contain a disease that risked becoming more common among other sections of its 70 million population.

"Basically all the indicators for a quick advancement of the virus are there," he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

"We are worried about the trend."

With Iran straddling a key heroin smuggling route from the opium fields of neighbouring Afghanistan to the West, injecting drug users remained the main risk group, but sexual transmission was also on the rise.

Salazar, who heads the U.N. children's fund UNICEF in Iran, said there was a need to raise general awareness among the public at large, even if it can be a sensitive issue in a country which bans sex outside marriage.

"We see more and more sexual transmission as a driver of the epidemic," he said. "It creates the problem, so to speak, of how to talk about sex without talking about sex."

Aiming to make AIDS "everybody's business," he said UNICEF increasingly sought to approach influential religious leaders.

"They are okay with this," he said. "In comparison maybe to other religions, for example condom use or family planning is not a taboo issue."

IRAN "A LEADER"

Iran is currently a low-prevalence country in terms of HIV infections, with a rate of about 0.16 pct of the adult population, below levels seen in other parts of the world. For example, it was 0.8 percent in North America in 2006.

"But the infection rates are skyrocketing," Salazar said.

"In the worst of cases we are moving towards one percent or even 1.8-1.9 percent of the population."

Two thirds of cases were caused by addicts using infected needles, and Salazar said more and more narcotics were coming into Iran from Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy which is the key ingredient for heroin.

Opium production in Afghanistan rose by as much as 50 percent last year to supply more than 90 percent of global heroin, according to a United Nations estimate.

In an indication of the scale of the problem, a senior Iranian anti-drugs official was this week quoted as saying there were about 250,000 injecting drug users in the country.

"Often dealers are paid in drugs ... so there is a big and growing local market," Salazar said.

But he suggested Iran was well-placed to tackle the HIV/AIDS problem, referring to "advanced" policies in combating the virus among drug users in prisons and elsewhere, including seeking to encourage addicts to seek treatment.

"We see Iran as a leader in this field, which not only hopefully will help contain the epidemic in Iran but also provide examples to other countries," he said.