14/5/2004
Growing Problem Of HIV Among Young People In The Ukraine

The Ukraine is being threatened by an HIV/AIDS epidemic, fuelled by injecting narcotics than by unsafe sex, while the increase in HIV prevalence has shot up by 1,300 per cent in five years across Eastern Europe, said Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) during an official visit to Ukraine this week.

A UNICEF poll found that fewer than 70 per cent of Ukrainian teenagers knew that condom use was a means of preventing HIV infection. Most were also unaware that such practices as sexual abstinence, having fewer sexual partners and not injecting drugs also eliminated or lowered the rate of infection.

More than 80 per cent of people living with HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe are under 30 years old, unlike Western Europe and the United States, where only 30 per cent of HIV cases are among people younger than 30, the UN agency said.

"Far too many young people face poverty, high unemployment and lack of hope – the lifeblood of the drug trade – which in turn feeds the HIV epidemic," Ms. Bellamy said. "National and local leaders, with full support from the international community, must take immediate, concrete action to address the extreme vulnerability of young people to HIV infection."

Only 20 per cent of households in the Ukraine eat enough iodized salt to prevent iodine deficiency disorders, according to UNICEF figures. The deficiency is particularly acute in the north and west of the country and can impair the mental development of children. "Iodine deficiency disorders can be eliminated," Ms. Bellamy said. The challenge for Ukraine, beset with thyroid cancer because of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, was to enact legislation so that all salt produced in the country would be iodized, she suggested.