Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 1 – Fifty percent of all HIV/AIDS cases in Europe are in Russia. At the end of last year, there were 1.2 million Russians with these diseases, according to government reports But the situation likely is even worse than that because ever smaller percentages of those in high risk groups are getting tested, the To Be Precise portal says.
Thus, the portal says, it is correct to speak of an HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia given that 200,000 fewer people in high risk groups were tested last year than the year before and that in a roughly a third of Russia’s regions, the disease has spread beyond these groups to the general population (tochno.st/materials/tri-goda-nazad-rossiia-priniala-novuiu-strategiiu-borby-s-vic-i-teper-perevypolniaet-ee-po-vsem-punktam-my-sobrali-i-proverili-glavnye-cifry-ob-epidemii and tochno.st/materials/kak-rossiiskie-regiony-boriutsia-s-vic-i-gde-situaciia-xuze-vsego-reiting-esli-byt-tocnym).
Indeed, it appears that the decline in the number of new cases has more to do will the decline in testing, reflecting both the actions of officials who are not testing as much as they did and those of potentially infected individuals who do not trust Russian officials and so do not get vaccinated. That sets the stage for an explosive new growth in HIV/AIDS in Russia.
Also adding to these worries, the To Be Precise portal says, is that Moscow has been cutting back spending on testing and on medications for HIV/AIDS people in order to fund Putin’s war in Ukraine, a truly sad development after Russia had radically increased spending on both things in the years before the covid epidemic.
The share of the population infected in some regions such as Kemerovo, Tver, Samara and Tomsk is already comparable to that in some of the worst-hit countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The situation in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine also appears to be increasingly dire, he portal says.
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