Volunteers Hand Prostitutes Condoms, Advice

As night falls in Moscow, a 28-year-old man and a teenage girl approach a group of prostitutes with an unusual proposition: free condoms, pamphlets about safe sex, brochures about the risks of HIV/AIDS, and advice on where to go for a free doctor's consultation. The volunteers work with Harm Reduction, whose Moscow branch was set up by Doctors Without Borders Holland in 1997. The Russian nongovernmental organization Return to Life took over its operations in April 2001.

When the organization was launched, it aimed to help drug users kick their habit and reorder their lives. Its volunteers began working with sex workers only last year. Now their goal is to curb the rising rates of HIV in both groups. "The ideal result of our work would be to stop HIV," said Dima Blagagovo, who heads the Moscow office. "The realistic variant is if one or two people learn to act carefully. Say one person quits using drugs, or one person uses a condom when he should."

According to statistics from Doctors Without Borders provided by the Health Ministry, there were 56,630 new cases of HIV in Russia in 2000. Yet in the first seven months of this year, the ministry has registered 54,608 new cases -- an increase of 96.4 percent. Unofficial statistics suggest that the numbers are actually seven to 10 times higher. The overwhelming majority of HIV cases are among drug users, but the disease is spreading to young men and women in the sex industry.

Harm Reduction's efforts for drug users involve handing out alcohol swabs and brochures. Needle exchange programs are illegal in Moscow, but Blagagovo said he is trying to convince local health authorities, with whom he often meets, to change the law. The group has also begun work with a home for children abandoned by their drug-using or HIV-infected mothers.

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