Acceptability of HIV Vaccine - Efficacy Trials in Drug Users and Sexual Partners of HIV Infected Patients in Barcelona, Spain

The epidemiology of HIV infection in Spain has changed during the past decade. Surveillance of HIV infection occurs in 15 of the country’s 17 regions, and 2,264 new HIV infections were diagnosed in 2009 (Ministerio de Sanidad y Politica Social, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, 2010). As previously reported (Hernandez-Aguado, 1999), the HIV epidemic in Spain has been largely driven by injecting drug users (IDUs). Reductions in the rates of new infections among drug users were reported a decade ago for the first time since the beginning of the epidemic (Castilla, 2006). In 2009, 77.0% of new infections were acquired through sexual transmission, and IDUs represented less than 10% of reported cases (Ministerio de Sanidad y Politica Social, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, 2010). The HIV epidemic among IDUs continues to develop heterogeneously across different parts of Europe. In the European Union, the reported rates of newly diagnosed cases of HIV infection in IDUs are mostly stable or in decline (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2009). Data on newly reported cases of HIV infection in IDUs for 2007 suggest that rates of infection are still declining in Europe following a peak in 2002, which was caused by outbreaks in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In 2007, the overall rate of newly reported infections of HIV among IDUs in the 24 EU member states for which national data