Jayapura – The number of people with HIV/AIDS is on the rise in Papua, with around 500 people testing positive for the virus every year.

Latest data from the Papua province health office in March this year showed that 1,874 people were HIV/AIDS positive, an increase from the 1,749 people in December last year.

"If there's an addition of 125 HIV positive people in three months, it means 500 in a year. That's an official figure. But if we use the theory that claims for every known HIV positive case there are 100 unknown, it might mean 5,000 HIV positive cases a year," said Suwardi Redjo, head of communicable diseases subdivision at the Papua health office on Saturday.

Of the official figure of 1,874, 1,131 were HIV positive and 743 had full-blown AIDS. Most of them were between 20-29 years of age (785), 30-39 years (451), 15-19 years (165) and 40-49 (161).