MOSCOW, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- HIV infection rate in Russia has dropped by 27 percent over the last decade due to a notable increase in testing efforts, local media reported Sunday, citing the country's health authorities.
"In the past 10 years, the Russian Federation has seen a 27.1 percent decrease in HIV infection rates. The risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV has been virtually eliminated in the country," said the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being, also known as Rospotrebnadzor.
"Thanks to systematic measures, more than 99 percent of children born to HIV-positive mothers do not contract the virus," said the agency.
Rospotrebnadzor highlighted the expansion of the country's HIV testing programs. In 2023, 49 million blood samples were tested for HIV, a 74.8 percent increase from 2014. During the first nine months of 2024, 38.5 million tests were conducted, a 6.8 percent rise from the same period in 2023. ■
