Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
Russia: Reels under rapid rise of HIV/AIDS infections
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) March 12, 2012
Russia in 2011 saw a rise of five percent in the number of new HIV
infections by 62,000 new cases amid worrying signs that
heterosexuals and women are increasingly at risk, its chief doctor
said Monday.
"In 2011, 62,000 new infections were recorded in the country,"
said Gennady Onishchenko, the head of Russia's sanitary protection
agency, quoted by Russian news agencies.
He said that over 600,000 cases of HIV infection had been recorded
in Russia since 1987, although this number is far lower than an
estimate by the United Nations that 980,000 people have been
infected with the virus in Russia.
He expressed concern that women were increasingly being exposed to
the virus and said that in 13 regions of Russia more than half of
HIV infections were of women.
Onishchenko said that transmission of the virus between
heterosexuals was on the rise and now accounted for 39.9 percent
of infections. However most new infections, 57.6 percent, were
still caused in intravenous drug injections.
Russia has long been criticised by international agencies for
failing to spend money properly on anti-HIV programmes and not
targeting groups most at risk like drug users, homosexuals and sex
workers.
Andrei Zlobin, the head of Russia's HIV victims association, said
that the whole fight against the virus in the country was marked
by a lack of efficiency, with contradictory statistics and a lack
of a government strategy.
"The big question is why a country which spends so much materially
lacks such efficiency," he told AFP.
The fight against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is a major
social battle for the Russian authorities in a region where the
infection is spreading five times faster than the global average.
But activists have long said that the fight is being impeded by a
continued social stigma against the high risk groups like
homosexuals and drug users.