Dec 01, Colombo: Sri Lanka National AIDS Prevention Unit says that a cumulative total of 1,129 HIV cases has been recorded in the country by the end of September 2008. However, an estimated 4,000 HIV positive persons are living in the country currently.

Of the identified patients 432 are female and 597 are males. Thirty one of them are children. Among them 281 have come to AIDS stage and 180 of them have already died, said the AIDS Prevention Unit. The highest number of HIV positive cases has been identified from Western Province.

Up to May 2007, a total of 872 patients had been diagnosed as HIV positive, of whom 220 had developed AIDS, and 162 had died. In 2007, fifty thousand persons underwent the blood tests for HIV in Sri Lanka.

According to the UNICEF figures AIDS affects less than 0.1 percent of the general population and despite the decades of conflict and fighting the country still has a low HIV prevalence rate.

However, AIDS activists say the HIV positive cases are underreported and the figures could be higher as more people were displaced from their homes in the North and all the conditions are there for an AIDS epidemic.