|
(Mosnews.com) Europe’s largest HIV/AIDS epidemic is mounting in Russia, which had about 940,000 cases of HIV in 2005 (1.1 per cent of the adult population) as against 1.5 million in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, says a Tuesday report by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), ITAR-TASS news agency reports .
Intravenous drug addiction is the main source of infection for young people under 30, the report says. For instance, nearly 30% of such drug addicts in St. Petersburg are HIV-infected. HIV was also spreading from drug users to their sexual partners, the report found.
“People on the margins of society are especially at risk of HIV infection in Russia”, said UNAIDS. It pointed to a study of prisoners in Moscow which found infection rates up to 120 times higher than in the general population.
Overall, only 5,000 of the 100,000 people who needed antiretroviral drugs in Russia were receiving treatment, said UNAIDS.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is also gaining momentum in several former Soviet republics— Ukraine (410,000 HIV-infected), Belarus (20,000), Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
According to the report, AIDS killed 53,000 adults in children in East Europe and Central Asia in 2005, almost twice as much as in 2003.
| 
