In the beginning of the year, people sick with AIDS were forced to flee from several districts of Karakalpakstan, autonomous republic in Uzbekistan.

The efforts of the state funded medicine in treating of people sick with AIDS are clashing with mentality of the local population and outright indifference of the authorities.

– We are believed to be lepers, – says Gul Azhiniyazova, resident of the 23th neighborhood of Nukus city. – But I’m not to blame for this disease. My husband came from Kazakhstan and brought the infection into our home. I had a gynecological disease and passed the tests. That’s how I learned of the terrible sickness. Then they checked my husband. We were promised they would hide it in secret, but neighbors quickly learned about it. I had to go to neighboring Khorezm city. Now we are planning to move to Tashkent.

Similar stories can be heard in almost every region of Karakalpakstan. Under the threat of physical violence four families from Chimbay and Karauzyak districtts had to leave their homes. Nukus, Khodjeyli and Amudarya districts are leaders in the number of AIDS patients. According to a local journalist, the number of AIDS patients is increasing, but there is no real statistics.

In an interview with “Jarayon”, the journalist recalled the incident. “In 2011, a drug addict died, reportedly from pneumonia. She earned for living and drugs doing prostitution. For several months she was finding customers every day. Thus, she infected dozens of young men, both married and single. No one knows for sure where they all are now! Testing for AIDS here is done voluntarily.”

Director of the National Center for AIDS, Nurmat Atabekov, said during the last year’s meeting with journalists that in 2012 the number of patients decreased by 13 percent, and according to official figures in Uzbekistan there are more than 25,000 people registered to have HIV.

According to a United Nations Joint Programme on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS), the number of HIV patients in Uzbekistan is at least four times more than the declared statistics and has long reached over a hundred thousand citizens. Karakalpakstan is in a special account of the international organization. In April, representatives of UNAIDS, together with other international organizations have once again learned that the Uzbek authorities are trying to “varnishing” the reality showing the foreigners only successful aspects of national healthcare system.

Gulya Azhiniyazova confirmed this fact. “The doctors themselves blabbed all about our problem, and then advised us to leave Karakalpakstan. If I want to have more children, they will be born sick and spoil the statistics. They also said that they did not have medicines.” Colleagues of Atabekov also confirm this recognizing the fact of purchase a fixed number of drugs disproportionate to the increased cases of sickness.

The UNAIDS unofficially disseminate information about the dynamics of the increasing of cases since 2006, when flow of migrant workers from Uzbekistan sharply raised. The desire of the Uzbek authorities to embellish reality has led to a total distrust of international organizations in official statistics. According 12uz.com, in the next six months, UNAIDS will work “on the identification of people in each group at high risk and determining the number of people living with HIV in Uzbekistan, as well as the number of people, including children, in need of treatment.”

One of the four objectives of the work plan of the programme in Uzbekistan is to support the country to improve the data collection mechanism, which is called “Know your epidemic.”

At the moment this call is applicable only at the level of the individual. However, the knowledge itself does not help neither Guli Azhiniyazova, nor her three children and husband, who is again working on the construction of cottages near Almaty, Kazakhstan. “We as if in a hostile environment,” she says.