Indeed, the figure is alarming: in Greece from 2010 to 2011 the cases of positivity to the HIV virus more than tenfold from 22 to 245. The interpretation, however, is perhaps a little forced, even if it is the result of a World Health Organization analysis reported by the medical journal Lancet and the Daily Mail: "A number of infections are deliberate by affected individuals themselves to gain access to $700-a-month benefits and faster access to drug-advocacy programs."
Incredible but true: getting sick to recover from the crisis. Not having other means at their disposal, in the most desperate cases Greek citizens also resort to this. Only a few dozen cases, it is true, but still indicative of an economic crisis which by now has increasingly social and at this point also clinical implications. It is in fact already known that in Greece, where the unemployment rate is now at 27%, suicides increased (tbetween 2007 and 2009 they grew by 17%, and by a further and dramatic 40% in 2011) and doubled in the last year homicides and thefts, as stated in WHO report, who adds: "Prostitution has also significantly increased, probably as a result of the economic difficulties".
In reality, as far as HIV is concerned, it must also be said that according to the WHO nn the last ten years, the number of adolescents worldwide who have contracted the HIV virus has grown by a third: "Over two million adolescents aged between 10 and 19 live today with HIV", 33% more than in 2001, and "many of them receive neither treatment nor assistance". In the region of the world most affected by AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of adolescents affected are girls who have had unprotected sex, often under coercion. In Asia, by contrast, the hardest hit are young drug addicts. In Greece, on the other hand, it seems, they are simply the poorest.
