Russia\u2019s HIV epidemic, already severe before the invasion of Ukraine, has worsened dramatically under the pressures of war, with health authorities now facing what may become one of the country\u2019s gravest long-term demographic crises \u2013 and Russia was already facing a sever demographic crisis thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the first year of the war,\u201d\u00a0Deutsche Welle\u00a0correspondent Andrey Shashkov writes for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, \u201cthe recorded incidence of HIV among military personnel soared by more than forty times,\u201d citing Defence Ministry data. By early 2023, the rate of new cases among soldiers had jumped to nearly twenty times pre-war levels.<\/p>\n
The implications are far-reaching. \u201cThe demographic and economic losses Russia will suffer as a result of this outbreak will have repercussions for decades,\u201d warns Shashkov. \u201cThey may ultimately even exceed the damage it has sustained from its invasion of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scale of the epidemic is already stark. Russia passed the threshold of 1mn people living with HIV in 2016, or roughly 1.5-2% of working-age adults. Anything over 1% is considered to be a bridge density where the virus will transition from high-risk groups such as homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers into the general population.<\/p>\n
Even at this late stage, the epidemic could still have been brought under control if there had been the political will, but the Kremlin is distracted by the war in Ukraine and all resources have been channelled into that effort, further undermined by the state\u2019s propaganda. Instead of introduce proven methods of prevention the Kremlin\u2019s message has relied on outdated and harmful ideas about family life and \u201cmoral staples\u201d\u00a0that is tied into the justification for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wartime wave of repression against civil society proved to be the final nail in the coffin of Russia\u2019s already weak system of assistance for people living with HIV,\u201d Shashkov says.<\/p>\n
Less than half of those infected are now receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) \u2013 the standard, lifelong treatment for the disease. Wartime austerity has exacerbated shortages of essential medicines, with regions increasingly unable to fund even domestic generic alternatives to Western drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe proportion of HIV patients receiving treatment has now fallen below 50% in Russia for the first time in many years,\u201d Shashkov reports.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the war has accelerated the collapse of civil society support. The Russian government has branded the Elton John AIDS Foundation \u2013 one of the largest global HIV NGOs \u2013 an \u201cundesirable organisation\u201d, and criminalised links with LGBT groups, deepening stigma and limiting outreach.<\/p>\n
Military life has compounded the risks. In trench conditions, \u201cthe uninterrupted supply and administration of ART is hardly realistic,\u201d Shashkov writes. Disruptions can lead to drug resistance, increasing the danger to both individuals and public health.<\/p>\n
Field conditions exacerbate the likely hood of transmission thanks to the reuse of needles and less than sterile conditions in battlefield medial stations. Drug taking amongst soldiers and unprotected sex adds to the problem.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cUnprotected sexual contact and sharing needles to inject drugs have not disappeared,\u201d he notes. \u201cOn the contrary\u2026 both are thriving in a fighting army of men who live every day as if it were their last and are earning decent money.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the number of infections are exploding. The problem is so grave that it has been officially acknowledged even by Defence Ministry doctors. The number of new HIV cases detected in the armed forces grew fivefold from the first quarter of 2022 to the fall of the same year. By the end of 2022, it had grown thirteen times. And by the beginning of 2023, peak growth was recorded of more than fortyfold. By the end of that same year, the HIV detection rate among military personnel was about twenty times higher than before the war.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s rules officially bar HIV-positive individuals from military service. But on the front line, those rules are often ignored. \u201cCommanders on the ground [are] refusing to let soldiers leave the front, no matter what condition they are in,\u201d says Shashkov.<\/p>\n
The virus\u2019s spread is not confined to the armed forces. Pregnant women in fourteen regions now test positive at rates exceeding 1% \u2013 a sign, according to the World Health Organization, of a generalised epidemic.<\/p>\n
According to UNAIDS, since 2022 Russia has been among the top five countries in terms of new HIV cases, accounting for 3.9% of the 1.5mn new infections worldwide. Only South Africa (14% of all new cases), Mozambique (6.5%), Nigeria (4.9%) and India (4.2%) have more new cases, and the latter two have significantly larger populations than Russia.<\/p>\n
While most of the world has halved new HIV cases since the mid-1990s, Russia continues to record between 50,000 and 100,000 new cases annually. Globally, new tools such as long-acting injectable treatments and preventive vaccines are advancing. In contrast, Russia maintains bans on substitution therapy and sex education \u2013 policies Shashkov describes as \u201cpurely political.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no objective reason why HIV should be decreasing across the world \u2013 except in Russia,\u201d he writes. \u201cThose who have contracted HIV during Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine will need expensive lifelong treatment\u2026 a burden on the Russian budget and healthcare system, and a blow to the labour market and demography throughout the second and third quarters of the twenty-first century \u2013 long after the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin\u2019s rule come to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s HIV epidemic, already severe before the invasion of Ukraine, has worsened dramatically under the pressures of war,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[31993,37437,332],"class_list":{"0":"post-286241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-bne","9":"tag-business-new-europe","10":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114904746263976435","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}