Impact
The largest HIV-prevention program in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region implemented by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine with support of the Global Fund has proven its success. The prevention program has been supporting the provision of services including syringe exchange, information materials, condoms, HIV and sexually transmitted infection rapid testing and counseling since 2004, and reached 196,992 people who inject drugs, 37,061 commercial sex workers and 28,800 men who have sex with men in over 300 cities throughout Ukraine in 2014.
More than ten years after the program’s start, the results are demonstrating its influence on Ukraine’s HIV epidemic, especially in people who inject drugs (PWID) population, which is the driving force of HIV in Ukraine: new HIV infections among PWID (measured through proxy incidence indicator of HIV prevalence among PWID who initiated drugs injecting less than 3 years ago) fell from 29.9% in 2004 to 3.5% in 2013, and the number of newly registered HIV cases among PWID dropped from 6,558 in 2008 to 4,670 in 2014 (excluding AR Crimea and Sevastopol) (fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Officially registered HIV cases in AIDS clinics, annual indictors 2008-2014
In addition, cohort study among prevention program clients indicates that HIV incidence rate among PWID has decreased almost three fold in the timeframe between three waves of follow-up measurements over a period of one and a half years (1.31% to 0.42 %) from October 2013 to June 2015. Such tendency also suggests that longer exposure to prevention interventions impacts the knowledge and motivation of clients to the safer behavior.