War conditions partly explain this health crisis. In a context of extreme stress, violence and constant displacements, risky behaviors are increasing: unprotected sex, recourse to injectable drugs with sharing of syringes. “Che two practices are widespread in an army made up of men who live every day as if it was the last, and who earn their lives well “, explains the report. Syears forgetting the medical practices at risk such as transfusions or the reuse of equipment in campaign hospitals. So many factors that promote the spread of the virus.
3.9 % of new world infections
But the Russian political context only aggravates the situation. Moscow, who presents himself as a defender of “traditional values “has prohibited the action of international prevention associations, including that of Elton John, accused of promoting “non -traditional sex, Western family models and sex change “. The stigma of LGBT people, declared as a “extremist movement “and the abolition of sex education in schools also strengthen a climate where prevention and care are widely hampered, can be read in the report.
Result: Russia is now one of the countries where HIV is growing the fastest and is among the first five in the world in number of new infections since 2022, behind South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria and India. According to UNAIDS, Russia alone represents 3.9 % of world infections in 2021, while it only has less than 2 % of the world’s population. These figures are however disputed by the Russian Federation, which describes them as “propaganda”.
Russian soldiers take drugs to the front to fight against boredom and fear: “Everyone knows it but closes their eyes”
There are approximately 1.1 million cases experienced in the country, but this figure could be underestimated due to a sub-diagnosis and a fragmentary data census. According to Vadim Pokrovsky, director of the Russian federal methodological center for HIV/AIDS prevention, quoted by the British daily The Times30,000 Russians of working age die from AIDS every year. “”The demographic and economic losses that Russia will suffer because of this epidemic will have consequences for decades and could even go beyond the damage caused by the invasion of Ukraine “prevents the report of Carnegie Politika.
This health crisis mainly affects young adults and reduces a workforce already weakened by military mobilization and war. But even if seropositivity is officially a reason for exclusion from military service, the reality of the front seems different: to compensate for the shortage of soldiers, some commanders would agree to keep infected soldiers, at the risk of further aggravating the spread of the virus, according to certain independent media.
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