HIV and AIDS infection rates are skyrocketing in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with young people comprising the majority of new cases, according to UNICEF. Nearly 80 percent of new infections from 1997-2000 in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) -- the former Soviet Union republics -- occurred among people under age 29, the report disclosed.

"HIV/AIDS has a young face in this region," said UNICEF Director Carol Bellamy. "Young people account for most new infections and their low level of HIV awareness, combined with increasingly risky behavior, herald a catastrophe." Her statement echoes other warnings from Medicins San Frontieres and the Open Society Institute, a philanthropic organization active in Eastern Europe.

The total number of infections in the region more than doubled from 420,000 in 1998 to 1 million in 2001, with the rate of increase in some European and CIS countries the world's highest. Other findings include:

• The high incidence of HIV/AIDS among children under age 13 -- 26 percent of all cases in the region -- can be traced to infections in Romania in the early 1990s through blood contamination events.
• Drug abuse accounts for most new HIV infections, with sexual transmission on the rise in Belarus and Ukraine and an increase in the number of sex workers.
• In Estonia, 38 percent of new infections occurred among those under age 20, and 90 percent among those under 30. The Baltic country's rate of new infections (more than 1 per 1,000 people) is 20 times the average of European Union countries.
• Less than 70 percent of teenagers in Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia knew that condoms offered protection against HIV, compared to 97 percent and 87 percent for German and French teens, respectively.
• Lithuania's national action plan, launched in 1995, which included easily accessible services for drug users and anonymous testing, may have helped keep the HIV-infection rate there down.
• Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were the first countries in the region with rapid increases in HIV. Estonia and Latvia soon followed, and Kazakhstan appears on the same course.

According to the report, current trends in the spread of HIV do not suggest that the epidemic has reached its peak.

Back to other CDC news for September 20, 2002

Previous Updates | Search the CDC archive