Lithuania won't eradicate AIDS by 2030 – MP

  • 2021-03-01
  • BNS/TBT Staff

VILNIUS – Lithuania will not meet the target of eradicating AIDS by 2030, the chairwoman of the parliamentary Commission for Addiction Prevention said on Monday, 

"Seeing the results and the figures we have today, we can say with certainty that Lithuania will not achieve the goal of eradicating AIDS by 2030," Morgana Daniele told a news conference.  

"This is primarily about prison inmates and (the authorities') reluctance and inability to provide the services needed to deal with HIV in prisons," she said.

Addiction issues should be dealt on the basis of health principles, rather than criminal law, the MP noted.

 Ausra Sirvinskiene, deputy director of the Republican Centre for Addictive Disorders, told the news conference that the use of narcotic or psychotropic substances is 70 percent higher in prisons than in the general population. 

The situation in prisons remains "vague" because of a lack of in-depth research on addictions among inmates, she noted.

Preliminary figures from the National Public Health Center show that 112 new HIV cases were confirmed in Lithuania last year, including almost 8.9 percent in prisons.