Human immunodeficiency virus infection in Russia: strategies for its control

The author discusses the current situation and the problems associated with the spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as well as modern strategies to counter its epidemic. Different agencies are shown to apply different approaches to estimating the number of people living with HIV(PLHIV) in the Russian Federation. If 1,104,768 PLHIV were detected at the end of2020 to have anti-HIV antibodies conf irmed by a specif ic immune blotting test, 7,889,382 or 799.7thousand PLHIV were under regular medical check-up, as evidenced by various official sources. Can both the indicators themselves and the difference between them be used to assess the situation? Thus, reports on the registered cases of anti-HIV antibody identification made it possible to establish that the HIV infections cases detected in 2020 were associated with heterosexual contacts (64.9%), intravenous drug abuse (31.1%), and sexual contacts among men (2.8%); and this indicates that HIV is spreading in all population groups. The difference between the number of people who are found to have anti-HIV antibodies and those who are followed up are about 30%, and only 75% of those who are followed up receive treatment, which hinders the achievement of the indicators of the examine-and-treat strategy, which requires 99.3% of all the funds spent in Russia for HIV control. This approach to combating HIV infection leads to the fact that the epidemic will continue in the next 10 years, and the number of HIV-infected Russians will grow, and this will result in further demographic and economic losses. The prognosis can be better due to the introduction of proven anti-epidemic measures.

HIV infection, statistics, transmission routes, strategy, prevention