By the end of 2019, 1,068,839 people living with HIV knew about their status, states the report on “HIV infection in the Russian Federation in 2019” published on the Federal AIDS Center web site. The center’s head, Vadim Pokrovsky, said to AIDS.CENTER that that figure accounted for about 70% of the total number of people living with HIV. That means, there are 1.5 million HIV positive people in Russia at the moment, he points out.
It is further reported in the document, that the infection rate in 2019 was 64.5 per 100,000 population. In addition to that, the rate in 24 federal subjects of Russia is higher the national rate. In particular, 179.5 new infections per 100,000 population was registered in the Kemerovo Region, 130.1 infections in the Irkutsk and Chelyabinsk Regions, 125.6 in the Sverdlovsk Region, 124.9 in the Novosibirsk Region and 118.1 in the Perm Region. A full list is available in the above motioned report.
According to the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being (Rospotrebnadzor), 534,990 patients received antiretroviral treatment in 2019. The Rospotrebnadzor Federal Center’s Head says, this is about one third of all people living with HIV in Russia. And despite the fact, that Russia committed to the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets, the country has not even approached them yet. However, in Pokrovsky’s terms, “the 90-90-90 targets should be viewed as a tokenistic formula”. “When they were inventing the name for the program, they realized that it was impossible to count 100% of the infected. As to their number, the discussion can go on forever. What we need is to strive to provide treatment for all registered patients, for all 100% of them,” the academician believes.
The Rospotrebnadzor Federal Center report points out that by the end of December 2019, 408,088 HIV positive patients had their viral load suppressed to 500 copies/ml of blood. This is 76.3% of all the patients who received antiretroviral treatment in 2019. Pokrovsky believes, the result is “not altogether bad”. “Russia has a rather complex body of patients and there are drug users among them. It is difficult to make them take medicine regularly, and consequently, it is hard for them to reach undetectable viral loads,” the academician explains.
The report also indicates that 33,577 patients with HIV died in 2019 due to various reasons, which is 8.9% less than in 2018.
At the end of last year AIDS.CENTER reported, referring to the academician Pokrovsky, that Russia ranked among top 5 countries to have the highest HIV transmission rate. He said, about 1.5 million HIV positive Russians still didn’t know they had the virus. At the same time Pokrovsky explained that figures presented by Rospotrebnadzor were traditionally higher than those presented by the Ministry of Health. According to him, the ministry only counts people who have applied to medical institutions and have patient records there, that number being about 900,000 people.