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December 02, 2006
HIV/AIDS in Iran
While Iran enjoys a low prevalence of HIV/AIDS, it does not mean that the risk is not high. Timing is critical in working on HIV/AIDS and nations have to work on it without any delay. In this report we try to analyze and assess the needs related to the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in Tehran, the capital of Iran. . Iran is located in South West Asia and is bounded by Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, Iraq and Turkey. With a population of 69 million (July 2006 est.)
Iran is the second largest economy in the Middle-Eastern region. It is also the second largest OPEC (The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil producer and has the world’s second largest reserve of gas. Iran’s economy is marked by an inefficient and centralized state in which most of the economic activities are controlled by the state. Private sector activity is typically small-scale. According to 2006 Index of Economic Freedom Report by the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal, Iran in terms of degree of economic freedom is ranked 156 among 157 countries and only North Korea stays after Iran (4). Currently Iran faces the high rate of unemployment and inflation with one of the youngest population in the world. The demand for higher education and jobs in Iran increased as a result of the country’s 1980s population boom. From 1976 to 1991, the country's population grew at an annual rate of 3.4 percent increasing from 34 million to 56 million people. The growth followed the 1979 Islamic revolution, when Iran's new government promoted population growth, in order to increase Omate Islami (Islamic Nation).
The health status of Iranians and the health system in Iran has improved over the last two decades. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care network.This network is active in providing primary health care and environmental health.This system is more successful in the rural areas compared to the urban areas, specially in mega cities like Tehran. As a result of this network, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen remarkably. In a transition period from a rural to an urban society, this country faces a number of socio-economic and political problems. Rapid urbanization and high population have had a negative impact on educational and health system and have confronted this country with serious human development challenges. Iran’s geographical characteristic marks this country as a bridge between East and West. In The Religions of the Silk Road, a book by Professor Richard Foltz, he explains how cultural traditions, especially in the form of religious ideas, accompanied merchants and their goods along the overland Asian trade routes in pre-modern times on the Silk Road. (5)
Iran is a crossroad for migrants and a short cut for drugs smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Europe, as the Golden Crescent of opium. In the north of Iran there are also the newly independent countries that those are suffering from one of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world. Iran has some “border markets” with these countries; also migrant workers including sex workers travel frequently between Newly Independent Countries from Former Soviet Union and Iran.
Posted by Syamak Moattari at December 2, 2006 12:32 AM
