Ukraine not equipped to do battle with HIV (11/22/98)

Ukraine not equipped to do battle with HIV

Eastern Economist

KYIV - "If there were 183 HIV infected people in Ukraine in 1987, this had risen to 25,000 people by 1997," said Valerii Ivasiuk, head of the health protection committee at the "My" (We) legal protection association in an October 28 statement.

He went on to highlight the changing nature of the problem facing Ukraine's authorities in their battle against HIV. He said the causes of contracting the infection have changed recently. In 1987-1995 HIV was contracted largely through sexual relations and intravenous drug use. However, in 1997 a significant number of infections were traced to donor blood. Last year, 100 cases of HIV infection among donors were uncovered.

"Donor blood requires internationally acknowledged testing systems to check it against the HIV infection," he said. However, Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko signed a decree on January 19 that banned the purchase of imported testing equipment, and instead millions of hryvni from budget funds have been allocated to the accounts of the small-scale enterprise Diaproph-Med, which produces local testing systems, according to Mr. Ivasiuk.

He said "these systems have Soviet standards and produce erroneous results in 25 to 33 percent of cases," while the imported equipment guarantees 99.8 percent accuracy.

According to the United Nations, the number of HIV infected people in Ukraine in the year 2016 will equal 1.8 million persons, and 45,000 will die from AIDS. U.N. Undersecretary-General and UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy had stressed during her first official visit to Ukraine on October 8-11 that Ukraine must urgently address its AIDS problem, which is the fastest-growing in Europe.

HIV cases grew from under 500 in 1994 to 36,000 as of mid-1998, according to information released by the United Nations.

| Home Page |