HIV is increasing in Eastern Europe faster than anywhere else in the world.  How is HIV perceived in these countries?  The UK's Brunel University, together with academic institutions in five East European countries, interviewed business people and health care workers to find out how they felt about the AIDS virus.

500 business people and health workers, aged between 25 and 57, from Russia, Georgia, Poland, Estonia and Hungary were interviewed on their attitudes toward sex, in general, and AIDS, in particular.  In addition, they were asked to write down the ideas that the word AIDS brought to mind.

Results from the five countries identified Russia as most affected by the virus. Nevertheless Russians were the least likely to view the epidemic as a serious problem.

The study found that:

• 20 % of the Russian business people interviewed reported having more than one sexual partner per week.
• 30 % of Russians felt it was a problem which could be solved, compared with four per cent of Georgians.
• Over a quarter of Russians felt that the epidemic ‘had little to do with me’.
• A high level of Russians (30 %) talked about the ‘hopelessness’ of the situation.
• The extremes of unrealistic optimism and fatalism that were found in Russia both contribute to risky behaviour and could help to explain the high rates of casual sex in this country. 

The most religious countries in the survey, Poland and Georgia, showed the most compassion for AIDS victims. But they also associated young people carrying condoms with promiscuous behaviour, creating a cultural barrier to young people practising safe sex.  In addition older people in Georgia felt that public debate about sexual matters was unacceptable.  The study also found that:

• Many people did not know that HIV could be passed through needles or from mother to child.
• Despite high levels of poverty, most people felt it was the taxpayer’s duty to care for HIV sufferers.
• 20 % of health professionals in Eastern Europe believed that AIDS came from ‘the West’ and over 10 % of people in Georgia, Estonia and Russia believed HIV was developed for the purpose of biological warfare.
• There was little evidence of the recrimination which happened in Western Europe at the start of the AIDS outbreak when the disease was linked with the ‘promiscuous’ behaviour of members of the gay community.

In order to stem the growing AIDS epidemic in the region new health campaigns promoting safe sex must be carried out which take into account:

• people’s sexual behaviour 
• each individual country’s religious values and  social mores
• the social and economic demands a country faces as it struggles to adjust from the Communist period
• the greater ideological freedom of the post-Communist era

More research should be carried out in other former Communist countries, in rural and urban areas, and amongst different social groups.   Relations between men and women and how they might affect women’s ability to protect themselves from HIV should be studied in these countries.

Source(s):
‘Social representations of HIV/AIDS in Central and Eastern Europe’, Social Science & Medicine 56: 1373-1384, by R. Goodwin et al, 2003
HINARI subscribers can access the full-text article here. Full document.

Funded by: The Soros Foundation

id21 Research Highlight: 17 December 2003

Further Information:
Robin Goodwin
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Uxbridge UB8 3PH
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1895 816200
Fax: +44 (0) 1895 203207
Contact the contributor: robin.goodwin@brunel.ac.uk

Brunel University, UK

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