'HIV RATES ON THE RISE IN IRAN'

TEHRAN: 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 UN 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."