Drug users injecting themselves in Jakarta. (Photo: EPA)

The increasing number of intravenous drug users in Indonesia shooting up everything from opiates to methamphetamine is threatening an explosion of HIV/AIDS cases, the National AIDS Commission warns.

Injecting drug use is responsible for an increasing proportion of HIV infections in many parts of the world. It is estimated in the World Drug Report 2009 that between 11 and 21 million people worldwide inject drugs, and of those, between 0.8 and 6.6 million are infected with HIV.

Dutch-sponsored researcher Christian Althaus has used mathematical models to demonstrate that cells infected with HIV could die even sooner than was thought until now. If infected cells have a shorter lifespan then this increases the chances of the virus escaping the attention of the immune system.