An unseen HIV epidemic is raging in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the statistics of new infected young people are escalating at an alarming pace, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says in its latest report.

The agency said that the rise in numbers is attributed to a rise in drug use and high-risk sexual behaviour, noting that young people who are either disillusioned, ostracised or marginalised are exposed daily to multiple risks, including "drug use, commercial sex and other forms of exploitation and abuse, putting them at much higher risk of contracting HIV," the report said.

According to the statistics in the UN report, about 3.7 million injecting drug users in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, or what constitute about a quarter of the world’s total are affected, and for most of those, the addition and HIV infection begins at adolescence.

"The issue is being exacerbated by high levels of social stigma holding young people back from seeking treatment," the report said

In Bulgaria, there are 4000 people living with HIV, according to the country’s health authorities as of the end of last year.
 
Of this number, a quarter are officially recorded as having HIV but the rest are not aware of their status, according to Tonka Vurleva, head of Bulgaria’s HIV-AIDS prevention and control programme.
 
The projection that about 3000 people were unaware that they had HIV was based on scientific modelling taking into account factors including the time lapse before symptoms manifest themselves.
 
More than 67 per cent of cases of people registered as newly-infected with HIV are from the group aged 15 and 29 and for this reason, AIDS awareness campaigning is being orientated towards Bulgaria’s younger people.

But there is the logical fear that with half of 2010 now having passed, the number of young Bulgarians who might have contracted the deadly virus might have escalated further still, some of them being unaware of their predicament and thus – exposing yet more young people to this problem.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that existing health and social services, it if all present in certain areas of Easter Europe or Central Asia are not tailored to young people who are also exposed to the highest risk. Furthermore, they are often exposed to moral judgement, recrimination and even criminal prosecution by respective local authorities when they seek treatment and information on HIV.

"Children and adolescents living on the margins of society need access to health and social welfare services, not a harsh dose of disapproval," Anthony Lake, UNICEF executive director said in the report.

"We cannot break the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia without empowering and protecting children and adolescents," Michel Sidibé, executive director of the joint UN programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) added.

One of the proposed solutions to the ever deepening problem in the region is for medical and civil authorities, to reach out and help young people infected with HIV or who are at risk of infection by setting up non-judgemental, friendly services addressing the specialized needs of marginalised adolescents, following the example set by Russia, where more than 100 youth-friendly facilities have been established to provide reproductive and sexual health services, information, counselling and psychological support, the report said. .