final program.qxd - Parallels Plesk Panel

OP 6.3
HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine
Pavlo Kyrychenko, MD, PhD
Department of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, Vinnitsa National Pirogov Medical
University, Ukraine
During the past years, most countries of the former Soviet Union have been severely
affected by HIV epidemics. The available data suggest that the Russian Federation,
Latvia, Ukraine, and Estonia are now experiencing some of the fastest growing HIV
expansion in the world. Since Russia and Ukraine account for some two thirds of the
population of the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries, and since citizens in these
countries travel freely (on a visa-free basis) to other FSU countries, epidemiological trends
in Russia and Ukraine clearly have a major influence on trends in other FSU countries.
ABSTRACTS
To further understand the development and recent trends of the HIV epidemic in Ukraine,
we analysed HIV/AIDS surveillance data and reviewed published studies and reports. The
first stage search procedure gathered information from reports and fact sheets of local and
international organizations including Ukrainian Centre for AIDS Prevention/ Ministry of
Health of Ukraine (UCAP), Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), World
Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), and International HIV/AIDS Alliance. Further, we
searched the literature up to January, 2006, using the appropriate MeSH terms and the
explode function in PubMed, and identified relevant publications in English. Russian and
Ukrainian language literature were searched via local Medical Library catalogues. In our
review we did not consider media publications, newspaper articles and conference
abstracts. Over 100 papers and reports were reviewed.
Given the relatively uniformity of case reporting procedures in the country, an analysis of
the number of HIV infections detected through case finding and screening, and the
proportions of HIV-positive cases among groups routinely tested was expected to provide
a reasonable insight into patterns and trends of the epidemic. These data suggest that
prior to 1994 Ukraine was not experiencing an epidemic of HIV; there were sporadic
occurrences, mainly among non-Ukrainians. During this initial period (from 1987 to 1994)
only 183 HIV cases were officially registered among Ukrainian residents (fig. 1), however,
even at this low level of transmission the infection had reached all administrative regions
of the country. The majority of the few, adult reported cases of HIV were acquired through
heterosexual and homosexual contacts.
Figure 1. Trends in newly diagnosed HIV infections, AIDS cases and
AIDS deaths (1987-2005) in Ukraine (annual rates per 100,000
population)
AIDS cases and deaths per
100,000 population
10,0
35,0
9,0
AIDS cases
30,0
8,0
AIDS deaths
7,0
HIV cases
25,0
6,0
20,0
5,0
4,0
15,0
3,0
10,0
2,0
5,0
1,0
0,0
0,0
1987- 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
1995
Year of report
HIV cases per 100,000
population
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