Ukraine May Be Facing AIDS Disaster

The war in Ukraine has taken its toll on the whole Eastern European country, but the HIV-positive community has been hit particularly hard. According to an in-depth report byNick Martin at Sky News, the rate of children born with HIV has already increased by one percent in Ukraine since the conflict broke out last year. This statistic is particularly telling because it shows how access to antiretroviral drugs and treatments for HIV- positive mothers have become harder to obtain. Between the war and bankruptcy, the new government in Kyiv is struggling to maintain treatment for the HIV positive population.

Ukraine has the second highest rate of HIV infection in Europe (after Russia), and the further increase in the last year is alarming. The increase demonstrates a slide back for Ukraine, which had made some progress in curbing the infection rate with a combination of providing drug treatments to positive people and setting up methadone clinics to help injection drug users—a large source of HIV transmission—kick their habit. 

In addition, Sky News reports on poz adults living in Ukraine’s underground, many of whom were born with HIV and grew up in state orphanages.

 A report from Michael Pizzi for Al Jazeera on the AIDS crisis in Ukraine also explained how the government had recently cut off all support and services to rebelling territories, including HIV and methadone drug treatments. Doctors in the region are frustrated by the lack of support from the government, and rely instead on supplies from charities, though those supplies are dwindling.

The two reports show that the war may have far lasting consequences on the population. Injection drug users living in recently annexed Crimea no longer have access to methadone treatments as they are illegal under Russian law. In addition, HIV and AIDS education skirts legal lines in Russia which has outlawed supposedly “gay propaganda." In the Ukraine, which also has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis,  Al Jazeera reports that HIV testing is down 60 percent as well, because of the war.

Watch the full report from Sky News below.