Article: Human immunodeficiency virus prevalence and risk determinants among people who inject drugs in the Republic of Georgia

A new paper discusses HIV prevalence and risk factors among people who inject drugs in Georgia. The article was just published in The Journal of Infection in the Developimg Countries and is authored by Natia Shengelia, Ivdity Chikovani and Lela Sulaberidze.

In Georgia as in most Eastern European countries, injecting drug use still remains one of the leading transmission modes of HIV infection. A cross -sectional, anonymous bio-behavioral survey of PWID was conducted in seven cities of Georgia in 2014-2015. Overall 2,022 PWID were investigated. Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses were performed to identify association of HIV positivity with other factors.

Significant associations were found between HIV positivity and history of drug injection, older age at first drug injection, safe sex behavior last year and preventive program coverage. HIV prevalence among PWID is stable and remains at low level. Our study shows that preventive interventions influence the sexual behavior of HIV positive PWID, however, the majority of injecting drug users are still not reached with these interventions. A changing environment may present additional challenges for harm reduction and current safe practices may change unless continuously supported by innovative HIV prevention programming.

Download the full paper here.

The article is also available on ResearchGate platform.

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