October 8, 2007

Ethiopian Infections Soar by the Month

A new report conducted by Ethiopia’s Federal HIV/AIDS Control Office (FAPCO) reveals that new HIV infections there have increased 26 percent compared to data collected at the beginning of this year.

In the first phase of the study, from November 2006 through January 2007, researchers found that 37,943 Ethiopians were HIV positive, representing 5.4 percent of the total population. The second phase, which ended in August 2007, showed that 70,470 people (7.3 percent of the population) were living with HIV.

While FAPCO’s Millennium AIDS Campaign aimed to test 1.8 million Ethiopians from January through July of this year, only 982,452 people were tested. According to Dr. Yibeltal Assefa, health program officer at HAPCO, 3 million testing kits have been prepared for the new year.