Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Thursday July 1, 1999
Anna Dolgov, Associated Press Writer
There were 4,085 HIV cases registered in the Moscow region as of Wednesday, the highest number for any Russian region, according to Health Ministry figures. Mikhail Narkevich, head of the Health Ministry's AIDS department, said up to 70 percent of all new cases are registered in the Russian capital.
Poverty in Russia's rural areas is pushing scores of young women to move to Moscow to work as prostitutes - and few of them seem concerned about the risk of AIDS. Drugs also are easily obtained on the streets and relatively cheap, and intravenous drug use has soared.
"Moscow still has no consistent AIDS prevention program, which is required by both the federal and the local legislation," Narkevich said.
In the first six months of this year, 4,867 new HIV cases were registered in Russia - more than double the number in the same period in 1998.
Russia is broke, and AIDS prevention programs are taking a back seat to problems that appear more pressing, such as mass poverty, crime and Russia's huge foreign debts.
Vadim Pokrovsky, president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, said previously lower HIV case figures seemed to have kept Russians from getting particularly worried. But now, he said, "utmost efforts" are needed to combat what he described as an epidemic.
Nationwide, 15,819 HIV-positive patients were registered as of Wednesday, according to the Health Ministry. The government's figures recorded 377 patients who developed full-blown AIDS and 406 people, including 101 children, who died of the disease.
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