Afghan Minister of Public Health Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatime warned Tuesday that AIDS transmission among illegal drug users remains the main factor of spreading the disease in the post-Taliban country.
"Addiction, especially using heroin through injection, continues to be the main channel of transmission of AIDS in Afghanistan," the minister said in a notice for Tuesday's World AIDS Day.
Fatime also called on all government institutions to speed up their efforts to eradicate the menace in the country.
"If we do not stop the cultivation, smuggling and using of drugs in the country, the number of AIDS cases would clearly increased," he said.
So far, some 556 registered cases of HIV/AIDS had been reported in the militancy-hit country, while nine people have died of the disease.
According to the latest report of United Nations AIDS and World Health Organization, some 33.2 million people, half of them women, suffer from AIDS around the world.