| The principal HIV risk factor in Russia has been
since 1996 up to now intravenous drug use, 89.5% of HIV+ (with known mode
of contamination) have been infected this
way.
The number of positive tests among drug users was
0.7% in 1997, 0.4% - in 1998, 1.7% - in 1999, 4.9% - in 2000, 6% - in 2001,
and 3% - in 2002. According to FRMC AIDS opinion, taking previous dynamics
into account, HIV prevalence among drug users should have grown in 2002,
while a decrease in 2002 was due to statistical deviations and inadequate
report documents. Thus, in particular, those who were earlier registered
as HIV-infected are not subject to testing for HIV, whereas if they are
tested for HIV, their HIV-positive tests are automatically excluded to
be regarded as recurrent, thereby resulting in a lower percentage of HIV-detected
cases. Proceeding from the assumption that drug abusers are tested, before
having been crossed off the register, at least once a year, in 2001 and
2002 a greater part of those tested were, in all likelihood, the same persons.
In this case, the percentage of the infected people who were detected annually
in 1997-2002 represented an annual increase in the percentage of infected
people from among this group. This being so, HIV prevalence among the group
in 2002 was 17%.
In 2002 the proportion of heterosexuals, who did
not use drugs, has increased (Table 4). The transmisson of a virus through
sexual intercourse is especially considerable in the regions where the
epidemic among drug abusers started earlier (Kaliningrad Region, and Krasnodar
Territory).
Table 4. HIV-infected
in Russia by main risk factors, %
| Main
risk factor |
1994
|
1995
|
1996
|
1997
|
1998
|
1999
|
2000
|
2001
|
2002
|
Total since 1.01.1987
|
|
People
|
%
|
| Homosexual
contact |
44.4
|
42.8
|
6.1
|
1.3
|
1.8
|
0.4
|
0.1
|
0.1
|
0.1
|
837
|
0.4
|
| Heterosexual
contact |
33.3
|
29.9
|
6.1
|
5.1
|
7.5
|
3.5
|
2.2
|
2.7
|
5.7
|
8144
|
3.6
|
| Children
infected by their mothers during pregnancy and delivery |
1.3
|
0.5
|
0.4
|
1.0
|
2.0
|
1.1
|
0.7
|
1.3
|
5.5
|
4658
|
2.0
|
| Intravenous
drug injection |
1.9
|
4.0
|
66.4
|
58.0
|
44.8
|
54.8
|
63.8
|
53.7
|
35.6
|
119496
|
52.2
|
| Non-specified
risk factor |
18.5
|
21.4
|
20.9
|
34.5
|
43.8
|
40.2
|
33.2
|
42.2
|
53.1
|
95573
|
41.7
|
Source: Vich-infektsiya (HIV-Infection)
Information bulletin (No. 25) published by the Federal Research and Methodological
Center for AIDS Prevention and Control and the National Research Institute
of Epidemiology, Russian Federation Ministry of Health.
Before 1996, homosexual contacts were the main
HIV risk factor, but at present only a minor portion of HIV+ is infected
through such contacts (0.1%).
The number of children born by HIV-infected mothers
has been so far relatively insignificant (about 5,000), but it is steadily
growing. The mothers of such children are, for the most part, drug users.
According to E.V. Sokolova (FRMC AIDS), the frequency of mothers passing
on HIV infection to their children in Russia before 2000 was, on average,
19.3%.
Over the entire period of observations, there are
registered 317 cases of infected in medical institutions (most of them
were 276 cases of children having been infected in hospitals in the south
of the country in 1989-90), 41 cases virus transmisson through blood transfusion,
and 22 cases of mothers were infected by their children from nosocomial
foci while breast-feeding.
|