Comments
Only one single change in the childhood vaccination programme was made during the period 1998-2001, as OPV began to be phased out on 1 July 2001, EPI-NEWS 23/01. This is reflected in the low coverage of OPV 1 in 2001, corresponding to vaccination of approximately a half year group. Coverage of OPV 2 and 3 are at the same level as previous years. Coverage of the DTaP IPV and Hib programme has been at the same high level throughout the whole period, and must be considered to be satisfactory. Coverage of Td revaccination is not quite as satisfactory but shows an upward trend. Data for coverage of the MMR vaccination programme in 2001 will be published in a subsequent issue of EPI- NEWS.

(A. H. Christiansen, P. Andersen, Dept. of Epidemiology)

AIDS 2001

A total of 70 patients were notified having AIDS in 2001: 25 (36%) women and 45 (64%) men. The number of new AIDS cases is thus no longer decreasing, Fig. 1. The median age for females was 32 years (range: 1-48 years) and for males 43 years (range: 0-83 years). One male and two females were under the age of 25, and two were under the age of 10. A total of 18 AIDS patients (26%) were men who were infected by sexual contact with other men, while 35 (50%) were infected by heterosexual contact. Eleven (16%) were intravenous drug users. A total of 53% of patients were from the greater Copenhagen area, where the incidence of AIDS is also still higher than in the country as a whole (3.1 per 100,000 versus 1.3). A total of 44 patients (63%) were born in Denmark and 26 (37%) were immigrants. Among the immigrants, half came from Central and East Africa, while six patients came from Thailand. Since 1996, an increasing proportion of patients have been diagnosed with AIDS at about the same time as HIV infection has been detected, Fig 1. Among the notified AIDS patients in 2001, 48 (69%) were also found to be HIV positive for the first time in 2001. These patients were more often from the provinces, more often immigrants and more often sexually infected than the 22 who were known to be HIV infected for a longer period of time before the diagnosis of AIDS. At the end of 2001, a total of 2,391 patients were diagnosed with AIDS, of which 517 were still alive, which represents an AIDS prevalence in Denmark of 9.7 per 100,000. A total of 16 AIDS related deaths were registered in 2001, which represents a further fall compared with previous years.

Fig. 1. No. of notified AIDS patients and percentage of persons, where HIV infection was detected the same year as AIDS, 1996-2001