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Odessa (pte028/24.02.2003/13:09) - An AIDS epidemic is set to ravage the Ukraine within seven years, with recent research suggesting up to one and half million people will be HIV positive in the country by 2010.
Officials at the country's Institute for Social Studies (ISS) http://www.osu.odessa.ua/faculties/socinst.php3 in Odessa said the disease is poised to explode over the next seven years.
According to official statistics 53,000 people were last year diagnosed as having HIV. But the ISS believes the real figure could be as much as ten times higher, Slovak paper 'Pravda' http:// www.pravda.sk/ reported.
There were 183 registered cases of HIV/AIDS in 1994.
The ISS also said the prognoses for the development of HIV and AIDS for the future was grim.
It said that while last year 2,300 deaths from AIDS were recorded, the figure by 2010 is likely to be just under 100,000.
Director of the ISS Oleksander Jaramenko said: "By that time we could see the number of people sick from HIV and AIDS rise to 1.44 million people."
He added that some areas in the south and west of the Ukraine have turned into "catastrophe zones".
The disease is reportedly spreading rapidly in those areas as sex and drugs tourists come to big cities, such as Odessa on the Black Sea, from across the former Soviet Union.
Experts have warned that if the ISS's predictions come true, the country's economy could be seriously affected and the massively underfunded health sector could collapse as doctors struggle to battle the disease.
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