[Aids and HIV infection in Poland in 2005]

The cumulative number of AIDS cases diagnosed in Poland in 1986 to 2005 reached 1761, and 806 AIDS deaths were registered during this time. In recent years a minor upward trend in AIDS incidence is observed with the highest so far numbers of incident cases in 2004--173 (incidence 0.45 per 100,000) and 2005-146 (0.38 per 100,000). Moreover the upward trend in AIDS mortality, which began in 2002, continued through 2005, with 64 reported deaths. Taking into account the official life statistics data, AIDS deaths might be underreported. In 2005, with 654 newly detected HIV infections, the incidence (1.7 per 100,000) was within the range observed in the past years. Injecting drug users constituted the most numerous risk group both among the AIDS cases (50.0%) and the HIV infection cases (24.0%). However, an important increase in proportion of heterosexually transmitted infections occurred from 5.8% in 2004 to 10.9% in 2005. The proportion of reports of HIV infections with missing information on the risk group though remained very high (57.2% of all 2005 reports). In order to monitor the epidemiological situation better quality of data will need to be assured.