MOSCOW, November 28 (RIA Novosti) – The number of HIV infections is expected to rise by 12.5 percent in Russia in 2012, with up to 200 new cases registered every day on average, the head of Russia’s federal AIDS research center said on Wednesday.
“Next year we expect around 70,000 new HIV cases,” Vadim Pokrovsky said.
“There were more than 50,000 new HIV cases registered in the first 10 months of 2012. That means almost 200 new cases are being registered daily.”
A total of about 62,000 people in Russia will be diagnosed with HIV in the full-year 2012, which is 12.5 percent more than in 2011, according to consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor.
Russia and Ukraine account for about 90 percent of the new cases in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to the joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS.
Although intravenous drug users and homosexual men remain the two groups at highest risk for HIV infection, the risk for young women who contract the virus through heterosexual contact is on the rise.
“Russia is going the way of Africa, where heterosexual infections are prevalent,” Pokrovsky said.