Introduction
While there is increasing evidence that HIV incidence is in decline among general populations worldwide, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are notable exceptions. There, HIV infections have increased 13% since 2006 (World AIDS Day Report 2012).
Several factors contribute to these rising rates. First, the political transition in the early 1990s led to dramatic economic dislocations as well as an expansion of criminal economies. Second, a highly structured public health system rooted in the Soviet tradition has been unable to effectively transition to meet post-Soviet challenges. These changes resulted in a dramatic increase in injection drug use (IDU), associated with an increase in opiate smuggling from the Central Asian state of Afghanistan.
Initially the HIV epidemic in the region was driven by people who inject drugs (PWIDs). However, while risk factor profiles vary substantially between countries of the region (Gouws and Cuchi 2012), surveillance data suggest...
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DeHovitz, J., Uuskula, A., El-Bassel, N. (2016). Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Specific Characteristics of HIV/AIDS Epidemic. In: Hope, T., Stevenson, M., Richman, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of AIDS. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9610-6_234-1
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