AEGiS-14IAC: Epidemiological surveillance of HIV/AIDS in Algeria, North Africa Based on the sentinel sero-surveillance survey.

14th International AIDS Conference

Barcelona, Spain - July 7-12, 2002

Epidemiological surveillance of HIV/AIDS in Algeria, North Africa Based on the sentinel sero-surveillance survey.

Int Conf AIDS 2002 Jul 7-12; 14:(abstract no. LbPeC9032)

Fares EG, Mokhtari L
Mustapha Hospital, Algiers, Algeria

Introduction The man objective of this work is to measure and follow up the trends of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to monitor the progress of the prevalence rates among selected groups. Material and methods The selected groups that have been studied were the STI's patients as high-risk group, the sex workers as very high-risk group and pregnant women as low risk group. The protocol used for the studies is the one recommended by WHO based on the principle of the anonymous and not correlated HIV screening.

RESULTS: |2916 persons have been tested from March 15th to June 15th 2000 of which 1984 Pregnant women, 793 STI's patients and 139 Sex workers. 04 among the five national health regions have been included in the sero- surveillance survey.

CONCLUSION: For Algiers, Tizi ouzou and Oran, in the pregnant women group 0 HIV+, this confirms to us the HIV didn't spread yet in the general population. Tamanrasset could bee identified as a potential risk region because 04 Algerian women among 455 were HIV+ (Prevalence rate nearly 1%). This might suggest that the HIV has already began for this region spreading in the general population Besides this we have among the 22 sex workers screened in Tamanrasset for HIV, 02 were positive. We can suppose that in Algeria the core groups from which the HIV is spreading are the sex workers and groups of mobile population that require sex workers services. In the view of some of the social, cultural and economical determinants in Algeria, we can fear the explosion of centers of dissemination of the HIV epidemic if the appropriate preventive means are not implemented very quickly. These surveys are still important to realize in order to get an overview of the importance of the issue and the trends of the HIV epidemic at a punctual time. IT is though very important to settle a surveillance system which precise the trends on the basis of the incidence rates.

Keywords: AEGIS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, HIV Infections, Sentinel Surveillance, Data Collection, Prevalence, HIV Seropositivity, Prostitution, Algeria, Africa, Northern, Disease Outbreaks, Human, Female, Male, Pregnancy, Epidemiology

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