JEDDAH, 3 May 2005 — Health officials have revealed that the number of AIDS patients in the Kingdom is much higher than originally reported six months ago. Yacoub Y. Al-Mazrou, deputy minister of health for preventive medicine, announced on Sunday that the number of AIDS patients has increased to 7,808 AIDS cases, of which 3,592 are Saudis.
Al-Mazrou attributes the new figures to greater public awareness and to initiatives taken by the Ministry of Health to increase AIDS awareness and education.
“The Kingdom recently opened three clinics to treat AIDS patients and the rate of new AIDS cases in those clinics indicates that there is more awareness among the infected and their families, that their disease does not mean having to hide,” Al-Mazrou said.
In August of 2004, BioMed Central published a research article titled, “Epidemiology of the human immunodeficiency virus in Saudi Arabia; 18-year surveillance results and prevention from an Islamic perspective.”
The study done by Al-Mazrou, Tariq A. Madani, Mohammed H. Al-Jeffri and Naser S. Al-Huzaim in cooperation with King Abdul Aziz University’s Department of Medicine in Jeddah and the Ministry of Health in Riyadh indicated that last November the total number of AIDS infected persons in the Kingdom was 6,046 of which 1,285 were Saudi with a total of 8,919 total cases reported from 1984 to November of 2004.
At the time, director general of the health affairs in Jeddah, Dr. Abdul Latif Al-Idrees said that the largest number of the total AIDS cases were registered in Jeddah (57 percent), followed by Riyadh, then Dammam and Asir.
The ministry will submit new AIDS figures in six months, in time for International AIDS Awareness Day in December.
