Russia on the Brink of AIDS Explosion

Russia is on the brink of a sub-Saharan-type AIDS catastrophe, experts say, and the government is doing next to nothing to avert the disaster. Russia has the world's fastest growing HIV epidemic, UNAIDS reported last month, with a dramatic rise among heterosexuals practicing unsafe sex. If the infection continues at its current rate, of the nation's 146 million people, more than 5 million could have HIV by 2007, said Vadim Pokrovsky, Russia's top AIDS researcher and director of the Center for AIDS Prevention and Treatment.

Russia's government devotes $5 million to HIV treatment annually -- a sum that Pokrovsky and other experts say is too small. Pokrovsky said $65 million is needed immediately for programs to prevent and treat HIV.

According to government figures, HIV infections leaped from about 87,000 cases in 2000 to more than 201,000 cases now. Since 1997, the infection rate increased more than 500 percent. UNAIDS estimates there are 700,000 HIV cases. Pokrovsky believes it is closer to 1.4 million. At this rate, between 5 million and 10 million people may be dead from AIDS by 2015, according to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

The Russian health system spends $45 per reported HIV case per year, compared with the $10,000 to $15,000 spent per HIV patient annually in the United States, CSIS reported in February. Many government officials think HIV/AIDS only affects "the scum of the earth," said Alexander Goliusov, head of HIV/AIDS prevention in Russia's Health Ministry. Foundations that fund AIDS prevention programs have appeared in Moscow, St. Petersburg and throughout Russia, but they are usually non-governmental groups existing on shoestring budgets.

Because the virus only appeared in Russia relatively recently, few HIV-positive people have progressed to AIDS so far. Only 2,095 Russians have died of AIDS since the epidemic began, according to official statistics.

Up to 43 percent of people infected in 2001 had no idea how they contracted the disease, according to official figures. Judging by the rate of other STDs, such as syphilis, Pokrovsky said many people who express ignorance about how they contracted HIV probably became infected through unsafe sex. By his calculations, infections attributed to unprotected heterosexual relations grew from 2 percent in 2000 to 15 percent of new diagnoses in the first six months of this year.

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