HIV/AIDS in Ukraine

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine is one of the fastest-growing epidemics in the world. Ukraine has one of the highest rates of increase of HIV/AIDS cases in Eastern Europe and highest HIV prevalence outside Africa. Experts estimated in August 2010 that 1.3 percent of the adult population of Ukraine was infected with HIV, the highest in all of Europe. Late 2011 Ukraine numbered 360,000 HIV-positive persons (increase in the rate close to zero compared with 2010). Between 1987 and late 2012 27,800 Ukrainians died of AIDS. In 2012 tests revealed 57 new cases of HIV positive Ukrainians each day and 11 daily AIDS-related deaths (on a population of roughly 45 million at the time).

Identified in the Ukrainian SSR in 1987, HIV/AIDS appeared to be confined to a small population until the mid-1990s, when a sudden and explosive epidemic emerged among injecting drug users and prostitutes against the background of severe economic crisis and collapse of social healthcare system. According to data reported in 2015 the epidemic is still on the rise, but it doesn't limit itself by a small group of drug users and appears to be accelerated within all parts of Ukrainian population with growing numbers of infected women. Ukraine has one of the highest rates of increase of HIV/AIDS cases in Eastern Europe and highest adult HIV prevalence outside Africa.