NEW YORK, April 28 (AFP) - Russia's draconian drug policies are fuelling an AIDS epidemic by denying HIV-prevention services to the highest-risk segments of the population, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday.
The 62-page report, "Lessons Not Learned: Human Rights Abuses and HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation," particularly cited police harassment of intravenous drug users, impeding their access to syringe exchange programs available in other countries.
"Instead of learning the basic lessons of how to fight AIDS from countries that have older epidemics, the Russian government is endangering the broader population by putting up barriers to HIV-prevention services for those most at risk," said Joanne Csete, director of the HIV/AIDS Program at Human Rights Watch.
Although 85 percent of the more than one million Russians living with HIV/AIDS were infected through narcotics use, drug addicts suffering from AIDS are excluded from anti-retroviral treatment.
Russia is also out of step with other countries in banning methadone for heroin-substitution therapy.
Due to policies prescribing detention for drug possession -- even tiny quantities -- Human Rights Watch said many users choose not to shop for clean syringes lest they be taken into custody.
"There are problems in the drug stores. Sometimes the staff of the store signal the police, or there are police hanging around, inside and outside," the report quoted one twenty-five year old drug user in Saint Petersburg as saying.
Arrest carries the further risk of detention in the Russian prison system which, the report said, has become fertile ground for spreading HIV due to the absence, not only of syringe exchanges, but also lack of access to condoms.
A former inmate who contracted HIV in prison told Human Rights Watch that he was given no information on prevention.
"Someone came to the cell to tell me (I was HIV-positive), and I had to sign a statement that said I was aware of the law, that I would get three to eight years in prison if I infected someone," said the inmate, identified as Viktor B.
"But I was told nothing about the disease," he said.
A UN study released in February showed that Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic state of Estonia were suffering from some of the fastest growing rates of HIV/AIDS in the world.
"If the Russian government wants to show that it takes AIDS and human rights seriously, it should reject overly punitive measures for small-time drug users and ensure that all drug users have access to a full range of HIV-prevention services," said Csete.
"Russia's continued ban on methadone is completely unjustifiable given the strong track record of substitution therapy in fighting both AIDS and heroin addiction," she added.
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