The region has the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world
WASHINGTON (AlertNet) – New HIV infections are rising at an alarming rate in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which together have the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
The region’s rapid increase comes at a time when HIV infections are decreasing globally.
“This is very depressing,” said Martin Donoghoe, programme manager for HIV/AIDS, STIs and Viral Hepatitis in WHO’s Regional Office for Europe. “The HIV epidemic in (the region) is not over.”
Donoghoe was the lead speaker on a panel devoted to the dire trend in Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the 19th International AIDS Conference which runs here until Friday.
So serious is the situation that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week appointed Michel Kazatchkine as special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Kazatchkine, former executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, chaired the panel discussion on Monday.
At 170,000 new HIV infections, the region trailed only sub-Saharan Africa and South and South East Asia in terms of new HIV infections in 2011. But the numbers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are on an upward trend, unlike those in sub-Saharan Africa and South and South East Asia which appear to be stabilising and declining.
New infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have risen 22 percent since 2005 and show no sign of slowing, according to WHO’s European Action Plan for HIV/AIDS 2012-2015.
The accessibility of life-saving antiretroviral drugs is abysmally low in Eastern Europe and Central Asia compared with many other areas. Sub-Saharan Africans are twice as likely to receive treatment as people living in Eastern Europe and Central Asia where only 23 percent of people who are eligible for HIV drugs actually receive them. In sub-Saharan Africa the figure is 56 percent.
Calling the situation “shameful”, Donoghoe said that despite efforts to increase the number of people receiving antiretroviral drugs, access to treatment is not keeping pace with the rate of infections. Moreover, he said, up to 60 percent of people in the region are not being tested for HIV because of limited access to services.
Injecting drug use is a major problem across the region, with between 40 percent and 70 percent of new infections linked to it, Donoghoe said. Other people who are particularly at risk of infection are men who have sex with men, transgender people, sex workers, prisoners and migrants.
But, Donoghoe noted, the region invests only about 11 percent of its HIV/AIDS resources on these high risk populations.
Other problems are a high level of stigmatisation of people with HIV and punitive laws, he said, which discourage people from getting tested and accessing care for fear of being detained or arrested.
UNAIDS defines the Eastern European and Central Asian countries of the European Region as including: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
“I feel like we’re disconnected from the rest of the conference where the attitude is ‘We can turn the tide’, but we’re still struggling,” Kazatchkine said.
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