AEGiS-AP: Official: Russia could soon have 3 million to 4 million people infected with HIV

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Official: Russia could soon have 3 million to 4 million people infected with HIV

Associated Press - Tuesday October 15, 2002

MOSCOW - Russia's HIV-positive population could soon reach 3 million to 4 million given the country's skyrocketing infection rate, a top AIDS official said Tuesday, according to news reports.

There are 215,000 officially registered infected people, said Oleg Yurin, deputy director of the Center for AIDS Prevention and Treatment. But he estimated the actual number at between 1 million and 2 million, the Interfax news agency said.

"If urgent measures are not taken and the financing of programs aimed at disease prevention is not increased, there will be 3 to 4 million HIV-infected in Russia in a few years," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Yurin as saying.

He said one problem was the shortage of Russian-made drugs to treat AIDS.

He said a year of treatment with Western drugs costs US$10,000 and that only two AIDS drugs are produced domestically, according to ITAR-Tass.

Last month, the U.N. Children's Fund issued a report warning that HIV infection rates are skyrocketing in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with young people comprising the majority of new cases.

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