Summary
Russia loses 30,000 working-age citizens annually to HIV, with 1.7 million total infections and nearly 500,000 deaths to date.
The epidemic strains the economy as treatment costs reach $670 million annually, compounded by shortages of antiretroviral drugs and gaps in early testing.
Heterosexual transmission now dominates, though marginalized groups like drug users, sex workers, and gay men remain disproportionately affected.
Reduced funding for HIV testing and inconsistent treatment availability hinder efforts to curb the epidemic, posing critical public health and economic challenges for Russia.
“If each year we lose 30,000 young, able-bodied people who could work for another 20-30 years, that is an additional loss [to the economy],” he said.
Depressing that it has to be explained in terms of the economy to get people to care.
Caring and prioritizing may be different. Having concrete numbers can enable decision makers to convince others.
Something being the right thing to do is not a convincing argument.
I think you just described the sad thing perfectly.
Are they still in the HIV denial phase? That’s about 40 years behind. The rest of the world has a couple people cured and are close to a vaccine.
They stopped tracking HIV deaths a decade or two ago when it became apparent that the Russian government doesn’t fucking care, largely because they are thinking of it in a (hilariously ironic) Reagan-esque mentality of it being a “gay disease”. And the Russian government HATES gay people.
For comparison, in the US, annually, about 5,000 people die from HIV as the underlying cause, and another 8,000 die from HIV as a contributing cause. https://www.kff.org/hivaids/fact-sheet/the-hiv-aids-epidemic-in-the-united-states-the-basics/
The US has double the population as well…
And third world health care, mostly.
What? The healthcare is good the healthcare system is bad
You have an embarassed billionaire healthcare.
“It’s the best in the world! I just don’t have access to it right now. But once I do, you’ll see!” they say, trying to decide between bleeding to death and the ambulance.If that isn’t an oxymoron, it’s as close as it gets.
A healthcare system not providing healthcare can’t be said to have good healthcare.
Just because SOME people receive good healthcare, doesn’t mean the healthcare is good overall or on average.Maybe it could hypothetically be the case that the system is bad but the care is good overall, but that is certainly NOT the case regarding healthcare in USA.
It’s absolutely justified to say healthcare in USA is on the level of a third world country. Cheap rhetoric doesn’t change that.
