For almost a year and a half, law enforcement agencies have been persecuting sex workers in Kyrgyzstan. During this period, the number of sex workers receiving HIV prevention services in some regions of the country reduced twice. Civil society organisations registered up to 475 cases of sex workers’ rights violations by the police every year.
In 2004, Georgia became the first and only country in the Eastern European region that succeeded in ensuring universal coverage by antiretroviral therapy (ART). The government funds treatment with first-generation medication, the rest is funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Treatment and testing are free of charge, and if a person seeks assistance at the appropriate time, the assistance is sure to be provided. When observing the dynamics of HIV/AIDS epidemic in Georgia in the past years, positive changes are noticeable right away. Life expectancy and quality have significantly improved in many patients. However, notwithstanding evident achievements in overcoming HIV/AIDS epidemic, the low HIV detection level remains to be the main problem.
As you might know from previous conferences, traditionally there will be a march or demonstration of HIV and AIDS activists. This year the march will take place just before the official opening of the conference at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre in the afternoon of Monday, 23rd of July 2018. With this email we would like to introduce us to you and ask you to join us in the march/demonstration to raise our voices for and with people living with HIV. We are aware that we might be a little ahead of time. But it gives us together with you more time to activate more people and to organise a good march in cooperation with the local authorities. Please forward this email to more organisations, people, living with HIV or relatives and friends you know and who might like to become part or support the march.
More than 30 thousand of Ukrainians are diagnosed with a not active tuberculosis and more than 10 thousand – with an active form. Every day 90 people get their status. These figures are underestimated: according to the World Health Organization (WHO), every fourth patient in the country stays undiagnosed. Back in 1995, WHO announced that Ukraine has exceeded the epidemic threshold – 50 cases per 100,000 people. Since then, the situation has only worsened – the conflict in the East of the country forced 1.5 million residents of Lugansk and Donetsk regions to resettle. In these regions, there were 15% of Ukrainians who were diagnosed with tuberculosis. Every fifth TB patient is HIV-positive.
In the post-Soviet countries there is no single document that would regulate the issues of HIV prevention, diagnosis and treatment for migrants as well as their legal status. Migrant workers do not get the adequate services in the countries where they work which inevitably leads to the decline of their health status and to the growth of the HIV epidemic in the region. This message was the main one in the discussion at the sub-regional technical seminar in Astana, Kazakhstan on February 19-20, 2018. The event was organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in cooperation with the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
According to the Republican AIDS Center, the total number of HIV positive citizens in Tajikistan has reached 10 thousand people, one third of them are women. Since 2004, women with HIV have given birth to 1,000 children, 600 of these children have no HIV. Each year the Republican Network of Women Living with HIV helps at least 5-6 young HIV positive people to find their spouses.
NGOs play a crucial role in the development of effective HIV/AIDS responses. Non-governmental organisations meaningfully involve community key population groups for a better understanding of their needs. The experts are saying that the limited space that NGOs are allowed to maneuver in, is threatening the effectiveness of national and regional policies to contain and stop the growth of the HIV epidemic in the region. AFEW International’s experts Janine Wildschut and Magdalena Dabkowska conducted a mixed-methods research to explore the process of shrinking civil society space in the EECA countries, how this affects NGOs and how they are coping with it. With this research, AFEW has gained more insights and learned how NGOs are currently dealing with those challenges. The research is part of AFEW’s regional approach within Bridging the Gaps: health and rights of key populations project.
The estimate number of people who use injected drugs (PWID) in Kyrgyzstan is about 25,000 people. Many of these people are women. Such is the data from the research that was conducted within the framework of the Global Fund’s grant in 2013. Within the framework of the project Bridging the Gaps: health and rights for key populations, AFEW-Kyrgyzstan decided to develop a clinical guideline to care in pregnancy for women who use drugs as there were no modern standards for working with women who use drugs in the country before.
While several years ago Tajikistan was concerned with young people being into opiates and stronger synthetic drugs, today there are concerns about the new-generation drugs – so-called spices. The official reports of law enforcement agencies fail to contain any data on the seizure of spices. However, a quick survey among the young people showed that those smoking blends have long been popular in the country.
In Kazakhstan, the key alarming trend of the recent years is the growing sexual transmission of HIV. Before, most people in Kazakhstan contracted HIV when sharing injecting equipment, but now most infections are transmitted through sexual contacts. As of today, there are about 29,000 of Kazakhstani and about 2,000 of foreign citizens living with HIV in Kazakhstan.
