Ukraine had the highest HIV infection rate in Europe after Russia in 2017, according to a report published by the United Nations World Health Organization’s European office on Nov. 28.
The annual report gives a breakdown of numbers of new HIV infections, by country, and by regions within countries. Russia and Ukraine accounted for 75 percent of the 160,000 new HIV infections in Europe in 2017.
Last year, 15,680 Ukrainians tested HIV positive, with 37 new infections per 100,000 people, while the average in the European Union is 5.8 for every 100,000 people.
Moreover, infection rates in Ukraine have been on the rise since 2015. Every year around 3,000 Ukrainians die from AIDS.
Ukraine has for decades had some of Europe’s worst HIV transmission rates. According to the Health Ministry, 321,382 people have been diagnosed with HIV in Ukraine since 1987, with 46,000 people dying of AIDS over the period.
Currently 144,633 people in Ukraine are HIV positive, of whom 47,000 have developed full-blown AIDS. Odesa Oblast has the highest infection rates, with 933 out of 100,000 people testing positive for HIV.
During the first three quarters of 2018, Ukraine registered 13,414 new HIV positive cases, which is a slight increase compared to the same period last year, according to the Health Ministry.
Sixty-five percent of all new cases are a result of unprotected sex, while 22 percent is transmitted by contact with HIV-infected blood. Another 13 percent of the new cases are newly born children who are infected by their mothers.
According to the WHO report, Western Europe has the lowest rates of HIV transmission. Among European countries, the highest HIV transmission rates are seen in the former Soviet republics, with Russia having 71 newly cases for every 100,000 people, and Belarus having 27. In comparison, only two EU countries have over 11 new HIV infections for every 100,000 people – Latvia and Estonia.
Among the regions with the highest HIV infection rates in Ukraine are the Russian-occupied regions of the Donbas and Crimea.
According to Russian data, in 2017 over 15,000 people in Crimea tested positive for HIV – almost twice the number that did in 2013.
