REVIEW ARTICLE
HIV Prevalence and Correlations in Prisons in Different Regions of the World: A Review Article
Raheleh Golrokhi1, Behnam Farhoudi2, *, Leila Taj1, Fatemeh Golsoorat Pahlaviani1, Elham Mazaheri-Tehrani1, Andrea Cossarizza3, SeyedAhmad SeyedAlinaghi1, *, Minoo Mohraz1, Fabrício Azevedo Voltarelli4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 12
First Page: 81
Last Page: 92
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-12-81
DOI: 10.2174/1874613601812010081
Article History:
Received Date: 26/6/2018Revision Received Date: 10/08/2018
Acceptance Date: 20/8/2018
Electronic publication date: 31/08/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The prevalence of HIV is substantially higher among prisoners than the general population, while the incidence varies considerably in different regions around the world. If we consider Sub-Saharan Africa as one region with the highest prevalence of HIV, data on African prisoners would be limited. Despite the low prevalence of HIV in the Middle East and North Africa, its incidence is rising in these regions with a few exceptions; there are insufficient data on HIV prevalence in prisons. A similar situation is present in both Pacific and Central Asia as well as in Eastern Europe. A high rate of infection is mainly observed among prisoners in Western and Central parts of Europe, since the data from these are more available than other parts. Nowadays, the sexual transmission mode and tattooing are important ways in HIV risks among prisoners after injecting drug use as the most common route of HIV transmission in all regions. However, it is difficult to compare and analyze the prevalence of HIV among prisoners in different regions regarding the limited data and different methods which they used in collecting data. Eventually, it can certainly be said that prisons are one of the high-risk places for HIV transmission; on the other hand, can be a suitable place for implementing HIV case-finding, linkage to treatment and harm reduction programs.