Residents of Chechnya criticize HIV statistics

According to the Chechen Ministry for Public Health, the republic registered 2590 HIV-infected and AIDS patients. For 10 months of 2016, the Ministry for Public Health identified 117 cases of when people were HIV-infected.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by an official of the Chechen Ministry for Public Health that most of HIV-infected patients are people who used drugs.

According to some of local residents, in Chechnya, the actual number of people living with HIV/AIDS may by times exceed the official figures. The locals believe that many HIV-infected people may be unaware of their disease, and some of them deliberately hide their disease because of various biases.

"I myself worked at the medical system for more than 20 years. And I am perfectly aware of all kinds of tricks with the reports and of reliability of those figures. I believe that the number of HIV-infected residents of the republic may be higher by 5-10 times," the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Toita, a woman from Grozny.

"My friend is a doctor, and he says that the situation with the spread of AIDS is simply critical at our place. Meanwhile, doctors note that if earlier, cases of HIV and AIDS were registered mainly in unfortunate environment, for example, among drug addicts, then in the past year or two, more and more HIV-infected people are identified among fairly well-off segments of the population. However, this fact is not made public," Ilyas, a resident of Grozny, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.