According to a country report by HRW, the Ukrainian National AIDS Center reported 13,039 newly registered cases of HIV infection in the first eight months of 2009, nearly half among intravenous-drug users.

The All-Ukrainian Network of Persons Living with HIV continued to note that persons with HIV/AIDS faced discrimination in the workplace, job loss without legal recourse, harassment by law enforcement officials and prosecutors, social isolation, and stigmatization.

In July an HRW researcher published an op-ed in the British newspaper The Guardian in which he reported that under President Yanukovych there had been "an increasing number of law enforcement attacks on [drug] substitution treatment programs" that jeopardized the country's progress to limit the spread of HIV among the intravenous drug-user population. Local NGOs echoed these complaints and asserted that law enforcement officials were illegally collecting information on drug treatment patients to determine their HIV status.