DOH Records over 1K New HIV Cases in January

A total of 1,021 new cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in just the first month of 2018, bringing the average of cases diagnose each day to at least 33 cases, the Department of Health said on Tuesday.

Based on the latest HIV/AIDS Registry of the Philippines (HARP) report from DOH’s Epidemiology Bureau, there were a total of 1,021 new HIV cases reported in January 2018 alone.

“Of the new cases, 17 percent (169) had clinical manifestations of advanced HIV infection (WHO clinical stage 3 or 4) at the time of diagnosis,” said the HARP report.

The report said there were also a total of 30 deaths which were recorded for the month of January.

Sexual contact remains the predominant mode of transmission totalling to 993 or 97 percent.

Among sexual transmissions, 885 cases (87 percent) were among males who have sex with males. Other modes of transmission were needle sharing among injecting drug users (18 cases) and mother-to-child transmission (2 cases).

There were eight cases that had no data on mode of transmission.

The report also said that there were five pregnant women diagnosed with HIV.

The HARP report also said that 68 new cases involved overseas Filipinos, all of which were infected through sexual contact (14 male-female sex, 38 male-male sex, and 16 sex with both males and females).

National Capital Region has the most number of cases totalling to 327 cases. It is followed by Calabarzon (168); Central Luzon (105); Central Visayas (105); and Western Visayas (69).

Since January 1984, there were a total of 51,409 HIV cases that were diagnosed in the country. There were a total of 2,489 deaths recorded within that period.