MOSCOW, Nov 20, 2007 (AFP) - AIDS has gained ground in Russia and Ukraine where drug use by injection remains the number one cause of new HIV infections, the United Nations' AIDS report for 2007 said Wednesday.
The number of new HIV cases was also on the rise in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and in Uzbekistan. The latter now has the largest epidemic in Central Asia, according to the annual AIDS report.
Of the 150,000 people newly infected with HIV in the former Soviet Union, 90 percent were in two countries: Russia and Ukraine.
Russia accounts for 66 percent of all new infections in the former Soviet Union, confirming the steady worsening of the AIDS pandemic following a period from 2001 to 2003 when AIDS was on the decline.
"The HIV epidemic in the Russian Federation continues to grow, although not as rapidly as in the late 1990s," said the report.
Injecting drug use remains the main mode of HIV transmission but infection through unprotected heterosexual sex is increasing steadily in Russia, according to the report.
The total number of people living with HIV in the former Soviet Union has climbed to 1.6 million, a 150 percent increase from 2001.
In Ukraine, new HIV diagnoses have more than doubled since 2001, reaching 16,094 last year and exceeding 8,700 in the first six months of 2007, the report said.
Southeastern Ukraine and the capital Kiev continue to be the most affected regions.
One in four prostitutes in the coal mining city of Donetsk is HIV positive while infection rates among intravenous drug users in some southern Ukrainian cities can reach close to 90 percent, according to the report.
AIDS is also progressing in Moldova where HIV infections doubled between 2003 to 2006 and in Azerbaijan where half of those living with HIV were infected in 2005 and 2006.
Uzbekistan is grappling with Central Asia's worst AIDS crisis, with HIV infections skyrocketing from 28 cases in 1999 to 2,205 in 2006. A third of drug users in the cpaital Tashkent are HIV positive, according to the report.
There was a sharp increase in the number of HIV cases in Kazakhstan after more than 130 children were infected in a hospital in the south of the country last year.
UNAIDS estimates that 55,000 people died of AIDS-related diseases in eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2007.
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