The number of people living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia rose in 2007 to an estimated 1.6 million, with an estimated 150,000 new HIV infections. Some 55,000 people died of AIDS related illnesses in the region in 2007.

The overwhelming majority of people living with HIV in this region are young; 75% of the reported infections between 2000 and 2004 were in people younger than 30 years (in Western Europe, the corresponding figure was 33%). In 2004, 30% or more of all new reported HIV infections in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and 45% or more in Belarus and the Republic of Moldova, were due to unprotected sex. Increasing numbers of women are being affected, many of them acquiring HIV from male partners who became infected when injecting drugs.

• Nearly 90% of newly reported HIV diagnoses in this region occurred in two countries,the Russian Federation (66%) and Ukraine (21%), but newly reported HIV diagnoses are rising in other countries, including Uzbekistan, which now has the largest epidemic in Central Asia.




• Injecting drug use is a major factor in the region’s epidemic.