The National HIV and AIDS Council says that more than 7,000 people in the Puerto Plata area are infected with HIV and as many as 2,000 may not know it. This situation, according to El Nuevo Diario and other newspapers, has spurred the Council to call for an urgent meeting to plan the measures needed to reduce the incidence of this disease. Council director Dr. Victor Terrero said that the situation is a cause for concern, because as there are so many institutions in the city working on the issue the number of cases should not be so high. Terrero said that the epidemic has become feminized, and “created an intolerable situation where many children are born with the illness, especially when there is a National Vertical Transmission Prevention Program. In other countries they have eradicated the purchase of pediatric medicine because they don’t have any cases.”