Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 1 Dec 1995
Philippa Fletcher

Arkady Yesinsky, head of department in Russia's State AIDS Inspectorate, said work to enforce a law passed nearly a year ago requiring long-term visitors to prove they did not have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was nearly completed.

The Foreign Ministry was distributing certificates to its embassies and consulates which foreigners would need to fill in when applying for a visa for more than three months, he said.

"I think that the system should start working from the New Year," Yesinsky told Reuters.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, which earlier this year announced a delay in the work to prepare the controversial regulation, said he could not immediately comment.

"The fight against AIDS must be seen as a problem of national security threatening the vital interests of society and state," said Mikhail Markevich, head of the Health Ministry's infectious diseases department.

He told a news conference to mark World AIDS Day Friday that Russia was lucky that AIDS had appeared later there than in other countries and the country had just 185 registered cases.

"But we have our own problems," he said. "The most dangerous and worrying is a sharp growth in the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among young people in Russia."

He said the number of syphilis cases doubled in 1994 and again in the first 10 months of this year.

"The outlook is not good ... That's why other groups must be taken on board, teachers, the media," he said.

Under communism, public discussion of sexual relations was taboo and there is still a widespread reluctance to broach issues such as the use of condoms, known as "galoshes" because of the thick, uncomfortable rubber from which they were once made.

Three years ago, posters appeared warning people about the dangers of AIDS and HIV.

Awareness had declined in Russia since then and there was no control over the quality and price of condoms, said Vladimir Pokrovsky, director of the Russian scientific methodological center for the prevention of and fight against AIDS.

"We can now guaranatee that 99 percent of donated blood is okay, but far too little has been done to prevent the spread of disease through sexual relations," Pokrovsky said.

He said there could be potentially catastrophic economic consequences unless more money was spent on prevention.

"If as, say, in the United States, one percent of the population had AIDS, our whole health budget would go on AIDS patients," Pokrovsky said.

"We have this strange situation, we spend $100,000 to track down one infected person and about the same amount on prevention across the whole country," he said. "We do not warn but only uncover."

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