Iran is fighting the spread of the AIDS virus by treating sufferers for free but taboos about the issue in the Islamic Republic are hindering efforts to raise public awareness, Iranian health officials said on Saturday.
Injecting drug users are the main risk group in Iran, which is on a heroin smuggling route to the West from the opium fields of neighboring Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy, the officials said.
But some health officials are concerned about the rising number of sexually transmitted cases of HIV.
More than 16,000 people suffer from HIV/AIDS in a country with a population of about 70 million, Deputy Health Minister Moayed Alavian told a conference. But he also said some estimates put the number of sufferers at 70,000.
"From this figure (of 16,000), 66.7 percent are injecting drug users," he told a conference at Tehran University to mark international AIDS day.
He said the Health Ministry faced challenges in fighting HIV/AIDS because of the social stigma attached to the disease and the fact that the subject was considered a taboo.
"There are also social and cultural limitations in providing education on how to prevent (the disease) and informing the public," Alavian said.
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