Geneva - One reason the AIDS epidemic is spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union may be that some producers of illicit drugs have been putting blood into drugs to test their quality, UN experts said yesterday. The heroin-like products, which could contain blood infected with the HIV virus, are injected by the unsuspecting user who becomes infected even if he uses a sterile needle.
The experts revealed the disturbing news a day after the Geneva-based AIDS programme issued its annual figures showing that 16,000 people are infected worldwide each day with HIV. More than 30 million adults and children have the infection and the number could soar to 40 million by 2000, it said. An estimated 2.3 million people died of AIDS last year.