The Ministry of Health called the publication about the entry of the Russian Federation into the top five in the spread of HIV a provocation

Information about the inclusion of Russia in the top five in the spread of HIV in 2021 by UNAIDS is not true, the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation said. The agency believes that journalists “arbitrarily and tendentiously” interpreted the figures from various sources.

Data on the high positions of the Russian Federation on the spread of HIV have been published in the media since early December with reference to the materials of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). It follows from the data that the infection is spreading in the Russian Federation faster than in Tanzania and Uganda.

“The mass media published supposedly UNAIDS data, which include the Russian Federation in the top five countries in the world in terms of the spread of HIV infection, which is not true and is another propaganda provocation directed against our country,” the statement reads. message Ministry of Health. According to the agency, the data presented do not allow assessing the situation with the spread of HIV in Russia.

According to the authorities, the incidence is decreasing from year to year: in 2019 – by 6.8%, in 2020 – by 24.8%, in 2021 – by 2%. In total, since 2018, the incidence has decreased by 31.4%, to 40.2 per 100,000 population. At the end of 2021, the number of people living with HIV was 851.8 thousand people (0.58% of the population).

The Ministry of Health notes that Russia has one of the highest HIV testing coverage in the world – about 30% of the population. Since 2000, the figure has almost doubled – from 24 million to 42 million people. The coverage of patients with antiretroviral therapy was more than 84%, prevention and treatment can “increase the life expectancy of patients and reduce the risk of spreading the disease.” As the Ministry of Health draws attention, “improving the quality and life expectancy of patients leads to their “accumulation” in contingents. However, the level of such accumulation is not sharp.”

“Despite the obvious successes of Russian medicine, there are more and more attempts to falsify statistical data on the situation with HIV infection in our country … We regularly face active information opposition. The Ministry of Health of Russia evaluates these publications in this vein, ”added the department. It noted that the Russian Federation, unlike many other countries, has its own program to combat the spread of HIV, which is funded from the federal budget. Other countries are said to routinely use grants from organizations such as UNAIDS.

How informed Kommersant, according to UNAIDS and ECDC, Russia accounted for 3.9% of the 1.5 million new infections in the world. According to this indicator, only South Africa (14% of all new cases), Mozambique (6.5%), Nigeria (4.9%) and India (4.2%) overtook Russia. UNAIDS estimates are close to the statistics of the Ministry of Health, which announced more than 50 thousand new infections in 2021.

Why the Russian authorities cannot come to an agreement on the number of citizens living with HIV – in the material “Kommersant” “Not hopeless, but disappointing”.

Leonid Uvarchev