MOSCOW, November 28 (RIA Novosti) - HIV cases among prison inmates in Russia have grown by 22,500 in the past five years, the country's head sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko said Monday.

"HIV incidence has been extremely high in the penitentiary system in recent years," Onishchenko said.

According to Onishchenko, 7,500 HIV infected inmates had been registered in 1999, whereas in 2004 their number had reached 30,000.

"This figure identifies a great problem," he said, criticizing the lack of funding for programs to prevent and cure the disease.

According to the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare, 335,795 HIV cases, including 1,737 children under 14, were registered in Russia as of November 15. Young people in the 15-30 age bracket account for 80% of cases.

The 10 leading regions in terms of the HIV-infection rate are Moscow and the Moscow region, St. Petersburg and its surrounding areas, the Sverdlovsk and Orenburg regions in the Urals, the Samara region on the Volga and the Siberian regions of Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk and the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomy.

The infection rate grew from 121 cases per 100,000 people in 2001 to 231 cases per 100,000 people by the end of 2005.

Many experts maintain that the number of those officially registered with HIV in the country does not reflect the true number of HIV-infected people, which has been reported to have reached nearly 1 million.