In France, condoms for young people aged 18 to 25 will be dispensed free of charge in pharmacies from 2023. President Emmanuel Macron said this on Twitter:
“We are making a small revolution in the field of prevention. The number of sexually transmitted diseases among young people is on the rise.”
This measure will complement others. So, from 2022, women under the age of 25 are provided with free contraceptives in pharmacies, but in 2023 it will be available to all women in the country. In addition, those under the age of 26 will be able to get tested free of charge for all STDs, not just HIV.
Meanwhile, the UN has included Russia in the top five countries in terms of the spread of HIV – such data for 2021 was published by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). In first place is South Africa (14% of all new cases), then Mozambique (6.5%), Nigeria (4.9%) and India (4.2%), Russia accounted for 3.9% of cases – about 58 .5 thousand.
The Russian Ministry of Health called these data "a propaganda provocation." Paradoxically, they are based on the statistics of the Ministry of Health itself, The Insider wrote earlier. So, a month ago, the chief freelance specialist on HIV infection of the Ministry of Health spoke about 58.5 thousand new cases.
At the same time, many experts suspect the agency of underestimating HIV figures. In particular, Rospotrebnadzor's HIV incidence rate is an order of magnitude higher.