There are more than 100,000 AIDS sufferers in Iran, a member of Iran's Parliamentary Health and Medical Education Commission says.

"Iran's Ministry of Health has announced that there are 20,000 AIDS sufferers in the country, but according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the real number must be five to seven times more, which makes it 100,000 people," the Fars news agency quoted Vice chairman of Iran's Majlis Health and Medical Education Commission, Hossein-Ali Shahriari, as saying on Sunday.

Shahriari further pointed out that there is no accurate statistics about the disease in the country.

"Most of the AIDS sufferers aren't aware of their disease, so they can easily transfer it to others," he explained. "Some other sufferers don't report the disease since they are afraid of losing their jobs and social positions."

According to Shahriari, the Iranian Health Ministry has tried to prevent the disease in some ways, but failed to release any accurate and complete report on it.

The WHO and the Joint UN Program on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS) report has recently said that the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS in different parts of the world has topped 25 million.

HRF/SC/MMA/DT