MOSCOW, Dec 1 (AFP) - Some 300 Russians demanded free AIDS treatment at a demonstration held in front of the government building in Moscow Wednesday to mark World AIDS Day.
"Our main demand is access to free treatment, which today is available to some 2,000 people in the whole country," said Mikhail Rukavichnikov, an organizer of the protest.
The demonstrators, mostly young people, unfurled a huge red ribbon, the symbol for the international AIDS awareness campaign, in the snow in front of the "White House" that houses the Russian government.
"Our death, your shame," they chanted.
Rukavichnikov denounced what he called the "absence of political will on the part of authorities" to pressure pharmaceutical companies to lower prices for anti-AIDS drugs, which today cost around 10,000 dollars per year, an enormous sum in a country where the average salary is less than 3,000 dollars per year.
Some 280,000 people in Russia are officially registered as being HIV positive, but only 2,000 of them have access to free treatment, according to a federal AIDS treatment center.
The United Nations estimates that there are some 860,000 HIV positive people in Russia.
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