HIV / AIDS statistics released

[Update: More general HIV statistics can be found here.]

The Kookmin Ilbo reported yesterday that 125 children between the ages of ten and nineteen have ‘AIDS’ [or HIV]. The National Assembly’s Health and Family Welfare Commission member Son Suk-mi reported on the 29th that according to Center for Disease Control data there were 379 AIDS patients in the first half of this year, and 17 of these people died. [I'm assuming that must mean full-blown AIDS, and not HIV.]

Among the 6499 people infected with HIV between 1985 and the middle of this year, 125 are youths between 10 and 19 years of age. 46 were infected through heterosexual contact, 52 were infected through homosexual contact, 10 were infected through blood transfusions or infected blood products, and one was infected via parents [in the womb?]. The other sixteen have not been confirmed in how they were infected or did not fill out the survey.

There are also 13 children under the age of ten who are HIV positive. Five caught it from their parents and six from blood transfusions or infected blood products. Two did not respond to the survey.

[This would mean, then, that in the last ten years, blood transfusions or infected blood products have led to HIV transmission, which is not something that makes me very confident in Korea’s blood supply.]

The number of men with HIV/AIDS in Korea is ten times that of women – 5,955 men versus 544 women. 2061, or 31.7% are in their 30s, 1544, or 23.8% are in their 40s, and 1475, or 22.7% are in their 20s. 3208 people, or 59.9%, were infected through heterosexual contact, 2095 people, or 39.1% were infected through homosexual contact and 46 people, or 0.9%, were infected through blood transfusions or infected blood products.