Press Releases 1997
AIDS situation in 1996
A total of 134 persons were found to be positive for the HIV antibody test in 1996, representing an increase of 9.8 per cent when compared with 122 new infections in 1995, the Department of Health announced today.
This brings the number of HIV infected persons in Hong Kong to 776 since the surveillance system was established in 1984.
The total number of confirmed AIDS cases is 245. Seventy of them were reported in 1996 alone.
Sexual contact has remained the most important route of HIV transmission. Last year (1996), heterosexual contact accounted for 80 per cent of the cases with reported routes of infection.
One more case of mother-to-child infection was reported in the last quarter of 1996, bringing the total to four.
Infection arising from injecting drug use and the transfusion of blood/blood product has remained relatively uncommon in Hong Kong.
Of the 776 HIV-infected, 389 acquired the infection through heterosexual sex and 241 through homosexual or bisexual sex; 14 were injecting drug users; four were mother-to-child transmission around the time of birth; and 66 acquired the infection through contaminated blood or blood products before 1985 when HIV Antibody Test and safe heat treated clotting concentrates were not available.
As for the remaining 62, the information available was inadequate for classification.