Some 1,287 people contracted HIV/AIDS last year, 481 of them Saudis, with the overwhelming majority infected through sexual relations, according to specialists in the field. Speaking at the opening of a three-day AIDS Patient Support gathering held in collaboration with the UN Development Program, Sana' Filimban, the president of the Saudi Society for Persons with AIDS, said that since its first appearance 15,213 cases of HIV/AIDS had been detected in the Kingdom, with 1,287 recorded last year. “Three percent of last year's cases were infected through the mother, two percent through syringes used in drug abuse, and 95 percent through sexual relations,” Filimban said. She warned, however, that due to various factors statistics on HIV/AIDS were unreliable. “The true number of cases is most probably many times higher,” she said.
