The UN said that Russia was in the top five countries with the fastest spread of HIV. The Ministry of Health, in turn, said that the incidence of the disease in the past three years had dropped by a third.
The Ministry of Health said that from 2018 to 2021, the incidence of HIV in Russia fell by a third. Thus, according to the department, over three years the incidence fell by 31.4%, or from 58.6 to 40.2 patients per 100,000 people. At present, there are 851,754 people registered in Russia with HIV, which is about 0.58% of the population, the ministry added.
The ministry also noted that Russia is one of the world's countries with one of the highest HIV testing coverage, which is almost 30% of the population, or 42 million people in 2021.
If compared to 2000, testing coverage has almost doubled. As for the coverage of patients with antiretroviral therapy, today more than 84% of the infected receive it, summed up the Ministry of Health.
It should be reminded that earlier it became known that in 2021 Russia was included in the list of five countries with the most rapid spread of HIV. The experts of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control announced it.
The report says that 1.5 million people in the world were infected with HIV during the year. Russia accounts for 3.9% of infections of all cases.