GENEVA, Nov 21, 2006 (AFP) - With drug use and non-sterile injection equipment still at large, the number of people living with HIV climbed to 1.7 million in eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2006, a twenty-fold increase in less than a decade, the latest UNAIDS epidemic survey said Tuesday.
The relentless hike saw an estimated 270,000 people newly infected in 2006, with almost a third of new infections diagnosed in people aged 15 to 24.
The majority of young people living with HIV/AIDS reside in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which together account for about 90 percent of HIV infections, and where the use of non-sterile hypodermic needles remains the main mode of transmission.
In eastern Europe, the use of non-sterile injecting drug equipment accounted for almost two-thirds (63 percent) of reported HIV cases for which information on the mode of transmission was available, the UN agency report said.
But it added that "an increasing proportion of HIV infections -- 37 percent of reported cases in 2005 -- are estimated to be occurring during unprotected sexual intercourse."
This meant that an increasing number of women were taking the brunt of HIV, with women under 25 accounting for 41 percent of new infections in 2005.
As the epidemic continued in the region, more people were developing HIV-related illnesses and dying, while improved access to life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs had been slow.
In June this year, fewer than 24,000 people were receiving antiretroviral drugs -- only 13 percent of the 190,000 people in need of them.
In Ukraine the epidemic maintained momentum, with a total 97,000 recorded infections. But since the tally only included those tested at government facilities "the actual number of people living with HIV in Ukraine is considerably higher -- an estimated 377,000 at the end of 2005," the report said.
It added that the country illustrated "how swiftly an HIV epidemic can move beyond most-at-risk populations and into the general population." Infections through heterosexual transmission, for example, climbed from 14 percent of new cases in 1999-2003 to over 35 percent in the first half of this year.
In Russia, the UN agency estimated the number of people living with AIDS at 940,000, four out of five of them aged between 15 and 30.
Prevalence varied from one region to the other, from three percent in Volvograd to 12-14 percent in Moscow and 30 percent in St Petersburg.
In Central Asia, the biggest epidemic was in Uzbekistan, which is located on major drug-trafficking routes and where the number of reported cases has more than doubled since 2001. An estimated 31,000 people were living with HIV there in 2005.
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