Ten-year HIV/AIDS epidemiology in East Azerbaijan in Iran from 2004 to 2014: brief report

Abstract

Background: AIDS is an emerging disease, and despite the fact that it has not been recognized for the first half-century since its inception, it has been known as a century-old disaster. This disease, by proliferation in immune cells and ultimately by weakening the immune system, makes people vulnerable to diseases. Our study seeks to examine existing cases of HIV/AIDS patients in East Azerbaijan province in Iran and provides useful guidance for patient diagnosis, treatment, and care. Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study in which the target group includes all HIV-positive or AIDS patients identified or reported from 2004 to 2014 in Tabriz Medical Sciences or Health Centers of East Azerbaijan province. The demographic information of all patients were recorded by a researcher-made questionnaire during visiting the disease-management counseling centers. All data including transmission of the illness (including all possible ways), the diagnostic date, the onset of treatment and the date of death were collected, and then entered into the software Stata, version 11.0 (Stata Corp., College Station, TX, USA). The information were imported in the ArcGIS software, version 10.7.1 (ESRI Inc., Redlands, CA, USA), maps were created, and geographic and spatial data were analyzed. Results: According to the results of this study, most patients with 89.9% were male, 28.9% were under the age of 36 years, 32.3% had elementary education, and the most common way of transmission with 42.3% is through the shared infusion. Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the highest prevalence of AIDS in East Azerbaijan province was observed in men under the age of 36 years and primary and lower secondary education in Tabriz and Maragheh cities.

Keywords

• acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
• epidemiology
• geographic information systems
• hiv
• iran