The colleague "the master of the pen" is ironic, of course, but, alas, there is only a kernel of a joke in every joke. We can really be compared to Africa on the issue of HIV. But the comparison will not be in our favor. In Africa, at least people with HIV don't pretend there isn't a problem. There the epidemic has long been recognized as a national tragedy, but ministers, religious leaders and school teachers are talking about it, and international programs are testing, treating and explaining to people that the condom is not a Western conspiracy, but a basic necessity. In South Africa, Aswetini, Lesotho and Mozambique, the prevalence of adults does reach double digits, and in East and South Africa it is estimated at an average of 5.5% among people aged 15-49. The reasons there are largely related to poverty, low medical accessibility, poor sexuality education, immigration and women's vulnerability. That is, to the conditions that society and the state at least try to change. Russia, on the other hand, is in a fundamentally more advantageous position: there are laboratories, cafes, antiretroviral treatment, a compulsory insurance system and an educational infrastructure. And it is even more significant that with all these advantages, the virus affects more than 3% of Russian men aged 40-49, and in 27 regions the epidemic has already reached a general stage. In total, more than 1.23 million people live with a confirmed diagnosis in the country - about 0.8% of the population, while only about half of them achieved suppression of the viral load. It turns out that these are not "individual cases", but an ongoing epidemic, which the statistics record, but which the public rhetoric scrupulously ignores.

The colleague "the master of the pen" is ironic, of course, but, alas, there is only a kernel of a joke in every joke. We can really be compared to Africa on the issue of HIV. But the comparison will not be in our favor. In Africa, at least people with HIV don't pretend there isn't a problem. There the epidemic has long been recognized as a national tragedy, but ministers, religious leaders and school teachers are talking about it, and international programs are testing, treating and explaining to people that the condom is not a Western conspiracy, but a basic necessity. In South Africa, Aswetini, Lesotho and Mozambique, the prevalence of adults does reach double digits, and in East and South Africa it is estimated at an average of 5.5% among people aged 15-49. The reasons there are largely related to poverty, low medical accessibility, poor sexuality education, immigration and women's vulnerability. That is, to the conditions that society and the state at least try to change. Russia, on the other hand, is in a fundamentally more advantageous position: there are laboratories, cafes, antiretroviral treatment, a compulsory insurance system and an educational infrastructure. And it is even more significant that with all these advantages, the virus affects more than 3% of Russian men aged 40-49, and in 27 regions the epidemic has already reached a general stage. In total, more than 1.23 million people live with a confirmed diagnosis in the country - about 0.8% of the population, while only about half of them achieved suppression of the viral load. It turns out that these are not "individual cases", but an ongoing epidemic, which the statistics record, but which the public rhetoric scrupulously ignores.

African countries at least have an excuse in the form of structural poverty and lack of resources; In Russia, such an excuse sounds weak. If in a country with modern hospitals and the possibility of free treatment, the viral load is suppressed in only half of the people with HIV, the issue is no longer a matter of "illiteracy of the population", but of the quality of prevention, stigma, access to treatment and willingness to admit the truth.