The number of cases of people being diagnosed with HIV is “on the rise” in the north, independent Turkish Cypriot ‘MP’ Jale Refik Rogers said on Wednesday night.

Addressing ‘parliament’ during its debate on the ‘health ministry’s’ budget for 2025, she said numbers are increasing despite the fact that in most of the developed world, the number of people with HIV has decreased in recent years.

A study carried out by the north’s Near East University found that the number of cases of HIV in the north had increased by 25 per cent in the three years to December last year, and that each HIV patient on the island of Cyprus infects an average of nine more people.

Rogers on Wednesday night criticised the north’s policy of deporting non-Turkish Cypriots who are diagnosed with HIV.

The Cyprus Turkish medical association has long called for blanket deportations to be brought to an end, with board member Nesil Bayraktar having previously described it as a “primitive practice”.

“As can be seen from the figures, the current practice has lost its effectiveness when we consider the public health and economic conditions, and has in fact had the opposite effect, preventing infected people from accessing treatment and being therefore inadequate in preventing transmission,” she said.

She added, “people living with HIV are stigmatised and discriminated against due to the structure of our society, and therefore they may tend to hide themselves.

“However, no health problem should lead to an ‘othering’ by society, and people’s human rights must be respected.”

The Joint United Nations programme on aids (UNAids) reported that there were around 39.9 million people worldwide living with HIV in 2023, of whom 1.3 million were newly infected that year.

Of that figure, 38.6 million were adults, 1.4 million were children, and around 53 per cent were women and girls. Additionally, around 86 per cent of all people living with HIV in 2023 knew their status, meaning that around 5.4 million people did not know they were living with HIV.

It also reported that 630,000 people globally died from aids-related illnesses in 2023, and that a total of 42.3 million people have died from such illnesses since the epidemic began in 1981.