Russian YouTube star’s HIV/AIDS documentary causes skyrocketing HIV testing in a single week online

On February 11, Russian YouTuber Yury Dud posted a feature-length web documentary titled HIV in Russia: The Epidemic Nobody Talks About. Just one week later, more than 13 million people have seen the film, and Russian-language web searches for “HIV” and “AIDS” have multiplied by 14 times on Google alone. Pyotr Lokhov and Pavel Merzlikin discovered that the interest Dud has sparked isn’t just virtual: The number of Russians signing up for HIV tests in major cities has also multiplied in recent days.

Russians are signing up for HIV tests all over the country, with testing numbers doubling in urban areas

Denis Gusev, the lead doctor for the AIDS Center in St. Petersburg, told Meduza that the number of people signing up for HIV tests has doubled since the release of Yury Dud’s latest documentary. “I think that [before the film came out], most people didn’t really think about the problem of HIV because they thought it had nothing to do with them,” Gusev reasoned. The staff of Krasnoyarsk’s AIDS Center said HIV test registrations there had also doubled. “We always ask why people come in. It turns out they all saw [Dud’s] movie,” said Dr. Ruslana Sheshina. The exact same growth pattern — a two-time increase in testing — was recorded at the AIDS Center in Nizhny Novgorod, according to NN.ru.

Meanwhile, in Ufa, the number of people undergoing in-person express testing for HIV has tripled since the documentary’s release. However, that growth is not universal: Rafael Yapparov, the lead doctor for Ufa’s AIDS Center, said he has not noticed any significant growth in HIV test requests at his facility. Yapparov himself did make an unexpected contribution to the discussion surrounding Dud’s new film: The doctor publicly recommended that Ufa residents take Meduza’s Russian-language quiz to see how well they understand HIV.

In some cities, interest in HIV testing has grown at lower rates. For example, express testing at mobile labs in Novosibirsk saw a 20 percent volume increase, NGS.ru reported. Invitro, the largest medical lab network in Russia, reported a 12 percent increase in testing throughout Russia as well as a 15 percent increase in Moscow and the Moscow region, according to Vedomosti.

Demand for at-home HIV tests is growing even faster, multiplying by up to 10 times

“The demand for tests has really multiplied. The number of visitors on our website about testing has gone up by more than 1,000 percent,” Yana Klevtsova told Meduza. Klevtsova is the marketing director for a conglomerate called Unident, which distributes the OraQuick express HIV test in Russia. Klevtsova said the distributor’s previous attempts to advertise the tests to doctors, pharmacies, and the public typically faced a “cold” reception. However, after Yury Dud’s film on HIV was released, everything changed: “Even the pharmacies that used to say express tests were irrelevant to them, that they didn’t want them, have been calling. Now, they’re asking where they can find these tests.”

Pharmacy chains have also been reporting an explosion in demand for express tests. The online pharmacy eapteka.ru ran out of tests within hours after Dud’s film was posted, CEO Anton Buzdalin told Vedomosti. Usually, the online store sees 35 orders a day for express HIV tests; between February 11 and February 13, it received more than 1,000. At Neofarm and Stolichki, two brick-and-mortar pharmacy chains, demand for HIV express tests rose by nine times in a single day, according to CEO Yevgeny Nifantyev.

Yana Klevtsova of Unident said she believes demand for express tests has grown faster than demand for in-person testing because express tests can be completed anonymously in the user’s home.

Report by Pyotr Lokhov and Pavel Merzlikin

Translation by Hilah Kohen