The Myanmar health authorities and a French non-governmental organization (NGO) have agreed to cooperate in prevention against HIV/AIDS, outlining tasks to be implemented in three townships in Yangon, a local weekly reported Monday.

According to a memorandum of understanding signed recently between the Myanmar Department of Health and the Aid Medical International (AIM), an NGO of France, the HIV/AIDS prevention project will be carried out in the three townships on the other side of the Yangon River in Yangon division, said the Voice.

The AIM has been cooperating with the Myanmar health authorities in engineering work relating to water and environmental sanitation.

According to the figures revealed by the Myanmar Ministry of Health, a total of 338,911 people in the country were estimated to have been infected with HIV. The figures were part of the findings of a survey jointly conducted by the ministry, the United Nations agencies and NGOs.

An earlier government survey showed that 68 percent of AIDS cases in the country resulted from heterosexual contract, while 30 percent was caused by injecting drug use and the remaining percent was due to mother-to-child transmission.

Figures of the country’s National Drug Center in Yangon also showed that about one percent of the blood donors have HIV infections.

HIV/AIDS stands as one of the three priority communicable diseases in Myanmar. The others are malaria and tuberculosis.