Global Fund acknowledges country's HIV/AIDS success

A specialist from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, speaking in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, confirmed on Friday that the mountainous former Soviet republic of 5.1 million is a leader among other Central Asian countries in its fight against HIV/AIDS. “In general, Kyrgyzstan is the leader on new innovations and implementations to fights AIDS not only among Central Asian countries, but also across the former Soviet Union,” Talgat Subanbaev said. Kyrgyzstan had become a regional leader in adopting new methods of working with drug addicts – in particular the widespread use of needle exchange programmes that reduce the rate of infection among intravenous drug users, Subanbaev explained. This drive has also been extended to prisons – places that have seen the biggest jump in regional HIV/AIDS prevalence rates over the past 24 months, according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Anti-retroviral therapy for HIV positive people is now more widely available in Kyrgyzstan than in the rest of Central Asia and education and prevention campaigns have reached more people than in other countries. According to official statistics made public in July, there are 865 people registered with HIV in Kyrgyzstan, while unofficial estimates put the figure at ten times that number. Though the main risk group for HIV/AIDS remains intravenous drug users, the number of people contracting HIV through sex has been rapidly increasing over the past ten years. “Currently 8 percent of new registered cases nationally are through sexual intercourse, while just a few years year ago it was less then 2 percent. This is a big concern for us,” said Fatima Koshokova, Director of the Rainbow Information Centre, a local NGO working on HIV/AIDS prevention in the southern city of Osh. The Global Fund’s manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Valeriy Chernyavskiy, said during a visit to Kyrgyzstan in June, that soon Kyrgyzstan would be among the countries where HIV positive people have excellent access to care and medical treatment. According to Subanbaev, the key to the country’s success in fighting HIV/AIDS is government commitment, a strong civic society and international support. “Our government took the leading position in fighting AIDS and has been serious about this problem for a decade,” he said. By 1997, the newly-independent country already had a legal framework for tackling the deadly virus, meaning that each ministry and government organisation is compelled by law to mainstream HIV/AIDS care and prevention. International support has been critical in making resources available for taking on the pandemic, for which there remains no cure. The Global Fund has approved more than US $21 million to fight AIDS as well as tuberculosis and malaria, in Kyrgyzstan. Despite these successes, many challenges remain, say those involved in fighting the virus. “We are on the international heroin smuggling route from Afghanistan to Europe, so drug use is rocketing, which means much more HIV, this is our reality,” Arkyn Jusuev, deputy head of the provincial AIDS centre in Osh, warned.