Majority of Drug Addicts in India Are HIV Positive

Written by Sapna Mhatre
Friday, 27 June 2008

THURSDAY, June 26, (News Locale) - One of the major risk factors for developing HIV/AIDS infection is drug addiction. A recent study by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) finds that a majority of drug addicts in the Indian subcontinent are in fact HIV positive.

The report says that these drug users are also not aware that sharing needles could lead to HIV. Furthermore these individuals are also more likely to have unsafe sexual habits thus exposing them to the risk of contracting HIV.

The rapid situation and response assessment (RSRA) survey of drugs and HIV in India involved some 6,000 drug addicts in the country. The survey found more than 1400 drug users had lent their used syringes to fellow addicts and another 1279 had borrowed syringes from fellow addicts.

The report added that most drug users fell in the age group of 21 to 30 years and that just 20 percent of them used a condom before having sexual intercourse. A majority of them had multiple sexual partners as well.

Other startling statistics from the report are that just 23 percent of them used condom while having casual sex although 72.7 percent of them knew that condom protects against HIV.

"HIV infection is often associated with unsafe injecting drug practices - the use of contaminated injecting equipment is a major route of HIV transmission," UNODC says on its website."Once the virus is introduced into an injecting drug user community, prevalence can rise up to 90 percent in a short space of time."