MOSCOW, April 17 (AFP) - More than 15 percent of Russians officially registered as HIV-infected are behind bars in the country's overcrowded prisons, a justice ministry official said on Thursday.
Of the 235,000 people officially registered as HIV positive in Russia, 37,240 are in jail. That means four percent of the prison population of 877,000, ministry official Sergei Selivanov told a news conference.
The real number of HIV-positive inmates could be much higher, since certain groups believe the nationwide toll could be up to six times higher than the official number. Vadim Pokrovsky, who heads the state-run National Center for the Fight against AIDS, told the news conference there could be between 700,000 and 1.5 million HIV sufferers across the country.
With 600 prisoners for every 100,000 inhabitants, Russia has the world's second highest incarceration rate in the world, after the United States.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) -- the AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW), Medecins sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), Prison Reform International and the International Committe of the Red Cross (ICRC) -- have published a manual for prisons in the former Soviet Union on how to prevent the spread of HIV.
They plan to distribute 8,000 copies of the book in Russian prisons.
AFEW deputy director Murdo Bijl said the organisation had not seen any books on preventing AIDS in Russia's prisons.
He urged the international community to "share skills with Russian clinics" and the Russians to "be open" to this advice.
The book prepared by the WHO and the NGOs advises preventative measures -- the distribution of condoms, sterilized needles or solutions to disinfect needles, and the use of professional medical staff to apply tatoos.
But Pokrovsky admitted that most of the measures would be impossible to implement in Russian prisons, which are rife with drug addicts, because of lack of money.
"The situation is continuing to worsen. In the coming years, the epidemic will not only affect risk groups but the entire population," he said. High-risk groups include intravenous drug users and homosexuals.
Some 5,000 young men were exempted from military service in 2002 after testing HIV-positive and 500 conscripts were sent home for the same reason, according to Pokrovsky.
Young people between 15 and 30 years are most affected by HIV-AIDS in Russia.
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