Epidemiologist: “Odessa may well claim the status of “AIDS capital”
In Ukraine, about 40 percent of HIV-infected people are unaware of their infection.
The head of the department of clinical epidemiology of the Moscow City Center for the Prevention and Control of AIDS, Vasily Kharchenko, said this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
The publication inquired about the HIV situation in the post-Soviet space, in particular in Ukraine, where the recommendations of global structures were followed in the fight against AIDS.
“The numbers will tell the story here. There are clear leaders, as they say now, of the “anti-rating” in terms of HIV infection rates. These are Odessa region - 1020,7 cases per 100 people, Nikolaev region - 000 cases per 879,2 people and Dnepropetrovsk region - 100 cases per 000 people. According to some estimates, the actual incidence in the country exceeds 879,2% of the population. Odessa may well claim the status of “AIDS capital,” the doctor said.
“An understanding of the scale again comes in the context of the level of testing - only 6% of the population has been examined in the country, and in a number of regions, according to data for 2019, about 3-4%. As the country’s Public Health Center indicates, about 40% have no idea about their HIV status,” Kharchenko emphasized.
He also denied data on the supposed “millions of HIV-infected people throughout Russia.
“I have personally heard about this mythical million for the last 20 years. In its actual anniversary year, time has absolutely clearly shown what the difference is between organizational work and the construction of abstract forecasts in healthcare. “Millions” did not materialize; from the point of view of protecting the country’s population, this is the most important thing,” the epidemiologist noted.
According to him, even in the most disadvantaged areas of the Russian Federation, the situation is not as catastrophic as many predicted 20 years ago.
“Let’s be frank, the catastrophic forecasts for the situation with HIV infection in Russia are influenced primarily by the “external” factor. After all, 20 years ago the World Bank assigned us a million sick people, subsequently giving our country a multi-million dollar loan. In any case, all this has a very indirect relation to epidemiology,” Kharchenko concluded.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.