Estonia's HIV rates worst in Europe - report

  • 2007-11-28
  • Staff and wire reports
TALLINN - Estonia has the fastest rate of new HIV infections in Europe, with the number of cases nearly five times the continent's average, a report by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has revealed.
The report, released Nov. 23, said that 504 new cases of HIV were reported per million inhabitants in 2006, compared to the European average of 111 per million. The average figure for EU member states is 67 new cases per million.

The results of the study were announced during a visit to Tallinn by ECDC Director Zsuzsanna Jakab, who praised Estonia's political commitment to tackling its HIV/AIDS epidemic.
"In response to the high levels of HIV infection being reported, Estonia has launched an ambitious long-term plan for 2006 - 2015.  This plan includes new initiatives on surveillance, prevention and treatment," Jakab said during her meeting with Estonian Minister for Social Affairs Maret Maripuu.
"We at ECDC are supportive of the work being done by the Estonian government to reverse the trend of increasing HIV infection rates. 

"On behalf of ECDC, I have pledged to support Estonia in a number of priority areas, including on surveillance, sharing country experiences and providing European guidance on HIV testing.
Irina Moroz, a medical doctor who heads LIGO, an NGO supporting HIV-positive women, told The Baltic Times that the country's high rate of injectable drug use and its small, close-knit population accounted for the rapid rise in new cases.
However she said that the way the epidemic is spreading in Estonia is changing rapidly and the government's prevention programs are not doing enough to keep up. 

"Their priority is still drug users. Nowadays it's spreading more rapidly beyond the drug users group," she said.
The most recent prevention campaigns do indeed target young people, but by now the rates of infection among the 35 - 40 age group is on the rise.  
"Now we have to think of how to target them for prevention. There is a focus on teenagers and young people, but the parents are not informed or educated and they still think that this is not their problem," she said.
Some 568 new HIV infections have been recorded in Estonia so far this year, health authorities said on Nov. 26.

Over the years 6,299 cases of HIV infection and 176 people with full-blown AIDS have been recorded in Estonia.