DUSHANBE, Dec 14 (AFP) - With the approach of the holiday season, Tajiks working in Russia are returning home bearing gifts, money and often sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.
The problem has reached such proportions that an education campaign warning of the danger has been running on television in this impoverished former Soviet republic in Central Asia.
One spot features a father returning home from Russia with toys for the children and a certificate attesting that he is HIV-negative for the wife. Each night television runs ads for condoms.
The campaign is a measure of how big of a problem the issue has become -- Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim country where the topic of sexuality is broached in public only rarely and then, with care.
"If sexually-transmitted diseases continue to spread at such a high rate, the country will make a big leap in its AIDS cases," one doctor who requested anonymity told AFP.
"The men who return home give syphilis and gonorrhoea to their wives. They often don't work, don't realize the seriousness of these infectious diseases and are content to treat themselves with home-made remedies," the doctor said.
Officially in this country of 6.3 million people just 119 are HIV-positive, but experts estimate the real number may be 20 times this figure.
In January, the United Nations provided 2.4 million dollars (two million euros) to help finance a government AIDS prevention program.
Tajkistan makes for a ripe AIDS breeding ground. It is the major smuggling route for Afghan opium to Western markets, so drugs and prostitution are rife.
The country is impoverished and much of the population is spread out among its mountains, so the level of education about sexually-transmitted diseases is low.
The seasonal migration of an estimated million and a half workers to and from Russia only amplifies the problem, experts say.
Tajikistan is among the poorest of former Soviet republics and many Tajiks earn their living in wealthier Russia for most of the year.
"This migration is the only thing that enables us to prevent a large part of the population from sinking into total poverty," Saodat Olimov, a specialist in migration, told AFP.
Last year migrant workers brought back between 200 and 230 million dollars into the country. The national budget for the year totalled 206 million dollars.
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