TALLINN, Dec 1 (AFP) - Estonia unveiled an action plan Thursday to slash its soaring HIV infection rate, the highest per capita in the European Union, and held events to dispel myths about HIV-AIDS.
"This is a highly significant plan, with very concrete actions planned for the coming years. World AIDS Day is a highly appropriate date to pass such a strategy," government spokesman Martin Jashko told AFP after the cabinet approved the 2006-2015 plan to combat HIV-AIDS.
The plan provides for sharply increased funding aimed at slashing new HIV infections from a current level of 55 people per 100,000 to 20 per 100,000.
"While this year we have 56 million kroons (3.6 million euros, 4.2 million dolars) in the state budget to deal with HIV and AIDS, in the year 2009, for example, the sum will be 400 million kroons, or seven times more," Social Affairs Minister Jaak Aab told journalists Thursday.
Experts have said that the the country of 1.4 million which joined the EU last year is in the "worst position in the world, outside Africa" in terms of HIV infection.
"The infection of people with HIV is out of control in Estonia," Maarike Harro, director of the National Institute for Health Development, said in September.
"In cases per million people, Estonia is in the worst position in the world, outside Africa," Harro said.
In the first ten months of 2005, 569 new HIV infections were registered, taking the number of HIV-positive people in the Baltic state to more than 5,000.
In the same period, 19 people were diagnosed with AIDS, bring the total to 89.
The situation contrasts sharply with the how things looked at the turn of the century, when Estonia was almost HIV-free.
HIV cases saw a sudden upsurge in the autumn of 2000 among drug addicts in Narva, a city on the northeastern border with Russia and home to a large ethnic Russian population.
It spread quickly through needle-sharing among intravenous drug users, and many then passed it on through unprotected sex with their partners.
"The virus keeps spreading among intravenous drug addicts but more new HIV cases are registered also among their sexual partners. These two are the main risk groups we are trying to focus on at present," Kristi Ruutel, HIV/AIDS expert at the National Institute for Health De0velopment, said earlier this year.
Fifty-four percent of new HIV-carriers last year were in the northeast, where the large Russian minority is often out of work and marginalised. The region is also a big pocket of intravenous drug users.
With more than 60 percent of new HIV carriers last year under the age of 25, events were held around Estonia Thursday to raise awareness and dispel myths associated with HIV-AIDS among the country's youth.
"The most common myth among young people is that one can get infected with HIV by sharing utensils at the dinner table or going to the same toilet as an infected person," said Liina Laastik of the Institute for Health Development, which published the results of an AIDS awareness survey on Thursday.
"But the growing number of young people who already know that everyday contact poses no threat have a much more tolerant attitude towards infected people."
The institute was also to organise a concert called "Notice the Person, Not the Disease" at Kaarli Church in the capital, Tallinn.
"With the concert, we wish to raise awareness of people about the need to avoid discrimination against those infected with HIV," said Laastik.
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