Aids in Ukraine

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine is one of the fastest growing in the world. Experts estimated in August 2010 that 1.3 percent of the adult population of Ukraine was infected with HIV, the highest in all of Europe. Late 2011 Ukraine numbered 360,000 HIV-positive persons (increase in the rate close to zero compared with 2010). Between 1987 and late 2012 27,800 Ukrainians died of AIDS. In 2012 tests revealed 57 new cases of HIV positive Ukrainians each day and 11 daily AIDS-related deaths (on a population of roughly 45 million at the time).

Identified in the country in 1987, HIV/AIDS appeared to be confined to a small population until the mid-1990s, when a sudden and explosive epidemic emerged among injecting drug users in the southern and eastern regions of the country. Ukraine has one of the highest rates of increase of HIV/AIDS cases in Eastern Europe.

HIV officially reached the territory of the former Soviet Union in 1987, about 5 years after the virus itself was discovered. Until 1995 there were only a few known cases of HIV infections in Ukraine. The country was therefore deemed to be “low risk” by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in terms of spread at that time. Between 1987 and 1994, 183 infections were reported.

In the mid-1990s, transmission was primarily through injecting drug use. By 2001, however, the proportion of new cases of HIV/AIDS attributable to injecting drug use had declined to 57% from 84% in 1997. During that time, heterosexual transmission increased from 11% to 27%, and perinatal transmission increased from 2% to 13% as a proportion of total cases.

UNAIDS estimates that the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS in 2003 was 360,000 (range 180,000 to 590,000), representing an adult prevalence of 1.4%. According to the Ministry of Health—which estimates that by 2002 there were more than 500,000 people infected, or nearly 2% of the adult population—the epidemic has now spread to every oblast in the country. Prevalence in the southern and eastern oblasts (Odessa, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk) is about three times higher than rates in the rest of the country. A major reason for this is the fact that the urbanized and industrialized regions in the East and South of Ukraine suffered most from the economic crisis in the 90s, which in turn led to the spread of unemployment, alcoholism, and drug abuse, thus setting the conditions for wider spread of the epidemic.

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