UNICEF report warns on sharp rise in HIV/AIDS among youth

Some one million people in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are now believed to be HIV-positive or have full-blown AIDS, a new report from UNICEF warns. More than 13,000 have developed full-blown AIDS and 5,000 have died.

The incidence, more than doubling the rate since 1998, is particularly severe among young people, who demonstrate alarming levels of ignorance, notably among intravenous drug users sharing needles and sexually active heterosexuals. In parts of the region, most notably Estonia, the rate of increase in infection is faster than anywhere in the world and the epidemic does not yet show signs of peaking.

The HIV/AIDS crisis is taking place against the backdrop of a period of economic stabilisation and even upturns in education and social spending in most of the 27 countries surveyed, the report records. But high levels of child poverty persist, with three in 10 Russian children living below the poverty line and eight of the countries still characterised by international agencies as low-income developing states.

But the report is critical of the response by many states whose preference for old methods of repression is having little effect.

The report attributes the rise predominantly to the increased availability of all forms of drugs and to increased levels of "social, psychological, and economic hardships". Young people are also having their first sexual encounters younger and largely unprotected - awareness of the protective value of condoms is far lower than in western Europe. The rise in prostitution is also problematic.

Russia and the Ukraine account for nine-tenths of new cases, in part because of their size, but per capita infections recorded in Estonia last year top the league table by far at 107 new cases per 100,000 people, 17 times the European Union average (6 cases per 100,000). Ninety per cent of new cases are aged under 29, while over a third are between 15 and 19.

Russia (69 cases per 100,000), Latvia (34) and Ukraine (14) follow. Romania, Azerbaijan and Georgia also reported significant increases last year.

The report attributes a far lower incidence in Lithuania than its Baltic neighbours to its early use of easily accessible services for drug users where abstinence from drugs is not a requirement for treatment. In Ukraine, on the other hand, punitive approaches to drug use, prostitution and homosexuality is believed to have driven the problem underground.

Awareness of the protective value of condoms among 14 to 17-year-olds ranges from 84 per cent in Hungary (in France the rate is 97 per cent) to 24 per cent in Tajikistan. Such awareness shows a sharp correlation to education and wealth, with women also showing a markedly better understanding of their value than men.

Social Monitor 2002 is published by UNICEF