01.12.2009
A Ticking Time Bomb
LWF Promotes Extensive HIV and AIDS Prevention Program to Contain Epidemic in Odessa
HIV and AIDS have reached an epidemic status in Ukraine. The second largest country in Europe has the highest HIV infection rate on the whole continent and it is spreading at a rapid pace. According to UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) data, an estimated 440,000 people among the population of 47 million live with HIV. In the 15 to 49-year age group, prevalence is estimated at around 1.63 percent. There are 40 new cases reported daily.
Until 1993, HIV and AIDS was not an issue in the former Soviet Republic, but after 1995 the number of those infected rose sharply. The first wave of infection spread via the use of syringes among injecting drug users, a group that currently accounts for 41.8 percent of HIV transmissions. Infection through unprotected sexual contacts is almost equally as high, mainly among heterosexual couples, and thus at the core of society. However, the government is far from taking control of this acute problem.
Situated on the Black Sea, Odessa was for years the European city with the highest number of people living with HIV. Meanwhile it has fallen behind the levels of the eastern Ukraine cities of Donezk and Dnipropetrowsk, which started systematically compiling statistics only recently.
In 2008, the HIV and AIDS center in Odessa recorded a total of 3,033 AIDS patients and 13,437 men, women and children with HIV. Experts estimate that the real number of HIV positive people is around 70,000. The high rate is disturbing. Young heterosexual men and women are increasingly becoming infected through unprotected sexual intercourse, and they are the biggest group.
The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has been supporting the prevention initiatives of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church Ukraine (GELCU) in Odessa since 2005. Accordingly, from November 2005 to the end of September 2007, all 13-17-year-old pupils in the city received AIDS education-a total of 22,000. While the question of providing information on AIDS at schools is still being discussed at the national level, the Odessa region school authority has now declared this as part of health education at all schools. Since 2006, the LWF in cooperation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria (Germany) has facilitated the training of an additional 2,811 teachers in AIDS prevention education. Through the latest project, running since April 2009, GELCU professionals are training 500 doctors, 500 nursing staff and 30 lecturers in medicine to deal with the subject of HIV and AIDS.
(LWI correspondent Constanze Bandowski provided this summary.)
