A massive 300% increase in the number of AIDS cases diagnosed in Northern
Ireland each year over the past decade has been revealed - and levels in the
Irish Republic are rising too.

Northern Ireland's Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said population
mobility [i.e. migration] was responsible for the huge rise.

He said there has been a 20% increase in cases of all sexually transmitted
diseases over the last five years as well.

Meanwhile, new figures from Dublin also reveal a 21% increase in incidents of
the potentially deadly condition in the first six months of 2007, according to
the Irish Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC).

The HPSC revealed 204 incidents of the potentially deadly condition were
recorded in the first half of 2007 compared with 337 for the whole of 2006.

Nationality was known in around 120 cases, with 42% born in sub-Saharan Africa
and 40% in Ireland.

The majority of those who contracted the condition through heterosexual contact
were of sub-Saharan origin. 

http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern_ireland_news.asp?id=72305

Ray


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We have our task, and God knows it is a hard one -- the salvage
of a shipwrecked world. - Lothrop Stoddard
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