Experts warn of rising AIDS stats from East Europe

A lack of information and public funding is helping fuel the spread of HIV/AIDS in several recent European Union entrants and threatens to become pandemic across the bloc, a panel of experts said on Friday.

They said the opening of borders on Europe's eastern flank could allow for an influx of infections into western Europe from areas such as the Baltics, where cash-strapped governments find it difficult to fund prevention and costly treatment programs.

In addition, they added, a lack of information on prevention and transmission of HIV, coupled with public prejudice against those who have tested positive, may worsen the situation.

"The reality is that we have disturbing figures in Western Europe and even more serious figures in Eastern Europe," European Commissioner Pavel Telicka told Reuters on the sidelines of an AIDS conference in the Lithuanian capital.

In Estonia, which joined the bloc in May, around one in every 100 people is infected.

AIDS and HIV-related deaths have been on the decline in western Europe due to the availability of treatment, mainly expensive antiviral drugs.

But experts at the conference pointed out that infection rates are still rising because of waning government commitments to prevention efforts and complacency linked to the availability of treatment. The number of people living with HIV in western Europe rose from 540,000 in 2001 to 580,000 by the end of 2003.

"In Europe, you have many countries with rich economies in which citizens have been lulled into a sense of complacency," said Jack Chow, WHO Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

"We have seen a doubling of the epidemic in Western Europe in the last 10 years."

Ominously, Telicka said, in Russia and Ukraine, which share a border with the EU after enlargement, there has been a 50-fold increase in infections to about one adult per 100.

Statistics presented at the conference showed approximately 2 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in eastern Europe and Central Asia.

"If we take just Russia, Ukraine and Estonia, we have a prevalence of HIV infection of 1.0-1.5 percent, which is as bad as it was in India in the 1980s," said Lars Kallings, special envoy to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe.

"This is a very dangerous situation."