“The Importance of Condom Use and HIV Testing: Insights into the Lower HIV Rates in Europe”

We recommend that you use a condom even in a permanent relationship, get tested for HIV infection, even if you think that you are confident in yourself and your partner. It won’t be redundant.

Is the smaller increase in cases in European countries related to general awareness?

— Yes, with preventive programs: informing adults and adolescents at workplaces and schools. The availability of condoms also affects – you need to be able to buy them, they are inexpensive, people are not shy about buying them so that there are machines with them. There are also harm reduction programs for drug users. Plus, antiretroviral therapy – if a person receives treatment, then he is not contagious to others, so we remove the source of infection. It will only work together.

In the world, the majority of those infected are women, because during sexual contact they become infected faster, they have greater risks. In our country, the epidemic initially spread among injecting drug users, they began to infect their sexual partners, and other partners from them. Then it went into the general population, now it is moving from the narcotic route to the heterosexual one.