There have been 2,883 HIV infections, 644 AIDS cases and 159 AIDS deaths in Nepal in May this year, according to a report released Tuesday in Kathmandu by the Nepal AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Disease Research Center. The report, "Regional Human Development Report on HIV/AIDS, 2003," estimated that about 0.5 percent of Nepal's population was HIV-positive by the end of May. "The disease is considered to be in a concentrated epidemic stage among the most vulnerable sub-population groups of injecting drug users, local sex workers, and Nepalese sex workers returning from India," the report said. "The dynamics of the epidemic are especially dramatic in the Kathmandu Valley, where HIV/AIDS prevalence was 2 percent or below among female sex workers and injecting drug users in 1992, but it is now recorded at 68 percent among injecting drug users and 17 percent among sex workers in the valley," it said. The report, the first of its kind in South Asia, attempts to examine the links between the epidemic and the larger challenge of human deprivation in the region. It is estimated that the number of Nepalese with HIV/AIDS is now over 60,000.

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