HIV positive is still affecting a lot many people in the countries of Eastern Europe and former CIS states. The cases in this region have been increasing, thanks to unsafe injectible drug use. The sharing of the syringes by the youth and the poor is causing uplift in the AIDS patients.

Eastern Europe and Russia are the most affected nations with injecting drug users or IDUs. About 75% of Russia’s IDUs are found positive against HIV.

Nina Ferencic, Senior Regional Advisor, HIV/AIDS UNICEF said," Sharing of injections is a very effective way of transmission, so you can have rapid increases in the epidemic. When HIV enters a drug using population, the chances of the virus spreading rapidly is very high”.

The number for those using injected drugs is significantly increasing. There will an era when the infection rate would reach to 60%, as the used syringes are the best carrier of HIV virus.

As told by Aleksandra Osin, Journalist & Outreach worker, Russia, there is a problem of selling syringes in the region and they have only one such store that sells the syringes, which is far away. So people often use used syringes.

UNICEF claimed that the illegal drug trade is causing AIDS in many a people in Afghanistan and Western Europe and among them; children are the most affected ones.

Even in India, in Delhi and Punjab regions, the illegal drug trade is prevalent, and there have been reported a number of cases where families have lost their relatives because of drug use and HIV.