InterPress News Service (IPS) - Friday, November 28, 1997.
Sergei Blagov

If it passes the test then the narcotic is often shared round in a single syringe, doubling the chance that the users will contract HIV. the virus that leads to AIDS.

The threat of the deadly disease means little to the addict: "I don't care about safety and AIDS," says Alexei G., 23, an addict for two years. "I just need my dose of heroin."

"The rapid proliferation of HIV this year is explained by AIDS spreading among drug addicts who use drugs intravenously, mostly using shared needles," the institute's Natalya Ladnaya told IPS, citing a near 12-fold increase in new cases in the first el even months of this year, compared to 1996.

The Russian Institute for Preventing and Combating AIDS says 3,841 more people had tested positive for HIV, the infection which can lead to AIDS, from January to November 25 this year.

Since HIV was first confirmed in Russia in 1987, a total of 6,448 HIV cases had been reported in Russia, Ladnaya said, including 360 children. Over the past 11 years, 264 Russians have been diagnosed with AIDS, including 103 children, of whom 250 have di ed. The Kaliningrad region (1,639 cases) and Krasnodar (1,059 cases), both home to major Russian sea ports, top the list of the areas most seriously affected.

Interestingly, Moscow, Russia's largest urban centre, with a population of about ten million population and a major hub of international contacts, has recorded only 458 HIV-positive people so far.

But Vadim Pokrovsky, director of the Russian Institute for Preventing and Combating AIDS is careful to stress that these reported cases only show a tenth of the problem.

"At the moment there are some 60,000 HIV-positive people in Russia, or roughly tenfold as compared with the total of reported cases," he told IPS. "I think there could be up to one million infected Russians by the year 2000, most of them being drug-us ers," he said. "Moscow and other major urban centers are likely to be increasingly affected," he added.

The Russian Health Ministry agrees that the rapid spread of the HIV virus across Russia over the past two years has been led by intravenous drug use, not sexual intercourse, and expected the situation to remain unchanged.

But though 90 percent of this year's registered AIDS cases are drug addicts, last year the principal cause of infection was through sexual intercourse -- underlining the need for better safe sex education programmers.

According to Russia's veteran sexologist Igor Kon, the number of males having their first sexual experience at age 16 increased from 38 percent in 1993 to 58 percent in 1995. The figures for young women were 25 percent and 33 percent respectively.

The Health Ministry this year says the number of reported cases of syphilis among teenagers has increased 51 times in the last five years ago -- a situation that owes as much to the declining standards of Russian health care in a 'reforming economy' as i t does to changes in the sexual mores of Russian youths.

The ministry declined to provide statistics of HIV infection among teenagers.

The problem has many more causes. Some experts argue that the police's crackdown on drugs just forces the addicts to use home made and often contaminated drugs. Some suggest decriminalising 'soft' drugs like cannabis to allow the police to concentrate on hard drugs and the dealer network, though the police themselves are opposed to the idea.

"I don't think that legalisation of drugs would be a solution," said Pokrovsky, though some leniency might help. "The prescribed use of the soft drug methadone can help some addicts to fight the addiction, but methadone is also illegal in Russia," he noted.

Interior minister Anatoly Kulikov recently said that drug-related crime has skyrocketed almost 80 percent over last year's level to 131,000 in the first nine months of 1997. "We consider this figure catastrophic for our country," Kulikov said.

Although the absolute figures of people with HIV and AIDS in Russia are low compared with the United States, health officials here are still concerned by the rapid spread of the disease in Russia. There were as many new cases this year than there were fo r all 1987 through 1996.

In 1997 Russia spent an estimated 4.5 million dollars on combating AIDS, an inadequate figure, say medical experts. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament asked the government for an additional four million dollars this year, but the c ash-strapped Russian government refused it.

The Institute for Preventing and Combating AIDS has been unable to pay its own wages bills. "The government already owes funds to pay wages for November and December," Pokrovsky said.

About 30.6 million people, about one in every 100 people of reproductive age on Earth, are infected with HIV say the United Nations in figures released ahead of Monday and World AIDS Day. Last year's estimate was 22.6 million. (END/IPS/SB/RJ/97)

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