Health and Family Welfare Minister Mohammad Nasim on Monday disclosed that a total of 865 people were infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in the country during last one year.

‘A total of 77,725 people were diagnosed, of those 865 found with HIV positive, during the test beginning from November 2016 to October 2017,’ he said this while briefing the newsmen at health ministry in Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka, reports the BSS.

He said of them 639 are men, 213 women, 13 of third gender and 63 of Rohingya refugees. The total number of HIV positive in the country is 5586 detected from 1989 to 2017,’ he added.

The minister said the HIV infection rate in Bangladesh is below 0.01 while one percent people are at the risk of the virus.

The World AIDS Day is observed on December 1 every year to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. This year’s theme of the day was ‘Right to Health’. The Ministry of Health and different NGOs have taken elaborate programmes across the country to observe the day in our country on December 6 formally.

The ministry has doubled the fund to prevent the HIV escalation where the donor agencies decreased its’ helps than before,’ the health minister said.

The ministry has also launched massive motivational campaign among the Rohingyas and providing them with kits containing birth control pills and other contraceptives, he said adding that the authorities concerned are taking measures to prevent outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) as some of them found with HIV positive.

A total of 2483 HIV positive patients have been receiving treatments from six government hospitals free of cost., the minister told the newsmen.