UN report: Russia and Ukraine have almost 90% of HIV infections in Eastern Europe

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The Russian Federation and Ukraine have almost 90% of all HIV infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the use of non-sterile injecting drug equipment remains the main mode of HIV transmission. As a REGNUM correspondent reports, the data was released in a UN report published on November 22 and called “AIDS Epidemic Update.”

Analysis of dynamics of the illness in Ukraine particularly says: “Ukraine’s HIV epidemic continues to grow. Annual HIV diagnoses have more than doubled since 2000, reaching 13,786 in 2005 and bringing to over 97,000 the total number of officially recorded HIV infections. Since that tally only includes infections among people who have been tested at government facilities, the actual number of people living with HIV in Ukraine is considerably higher—an estimated 377,000 at the end of 2005. National adult HIV prevalence was estimated at 1.5% in 2005.”

“The epidemic in Ukraine is still concentrated primarily among most-at-risk populations. HIV prevalence has consistently exceeded 5% among injecting drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men, but remains less than 1% among pregnant women in urban areas. Although increasing numbers of new, sexually transmitted HIV cases involve people who do not have a history of injecting drug use, using non-sterile injecting drug equipment remains the major risk factor for HIV infection in this epidemic. More than 45% of new HIV infections reported in the first half of 2006 were in injecting drug users (Ministry of Health Ukraine et al., 2006a). While the proportion of injecting drug users among all new cases of HIV has decreased (by way of comparison, it was approximately 60% in the first six months of 2001), there is no evidence that the epidemic among injecting drug users is declining. In the first half of 2006, the number of injecting drug users registered with HIV increased by 34% in comparison with 2003. HIV prevalence is very high among injecting drug users, and ranges from 10% in the city of Sumy to over 66% in the city of Mykolayiv.”

 "Ukraine presents a vivid example of how swiftly an HIV epidemic can move beyond most-at-risk populations and into the general population," the report says.