HIV epidemics in Middle East, N.Africa

DOHA, Qatar, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- HIV infection levels, which had historically been very low in the Middle East and North Africa, increased substantially beginning in 2003, researchers say.

"The Middle East and North Africa can no longer be seen as a region immune to the HIV epidemic," main author Ghina Mumtaz, senior epidemiologist in the infectious disease epidemiology group at Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar, says in a statement. "Based on multiyear analysis of thousands of data sources, we documented a pattern of new HIV epidemics that have just emerged among men who have sex with men in the last few years in several countries of the region."

HIV infection rates among men who have sex with men vary in the region but have exceeded 5 percent -- the threshold defining concentrated epidemics -- in several countries such as Egypt, Sudan and Tunisia, Mumtaz says.

In one area of Pakistan, the infection rate among men who have sex with men has reached 28 percent, the study says.

Moreover, by 2008, transmission of HIV via anal sex among men was responsible for more than one-quarter of reported cases of HIV in several countries in the region, the researchers say.