Some 43,000 new HIV cases were registered in Russia in the first 11 months of 2002, down more than 50 percent from the 87,000 cases registered last year. But these official statistics are misleading, said Vadim Pokrovsky, the country's top AIDS expert and director of the Center for AIDS Prevention and Treatment. Pokrovsky said the Health Ministry had stopped paying for HIV tests, forcing individual regions to pick up the cost. That means fewer Russians are being tested, and thus a large number of HIV-infected people are not being registered. Pokrovsky estimates that between 800,000 and 1.2 million Russians are currently infected with HIV, while the official total stands at 220,545 HIV cases. Each year, $3.1 million goes to treating HIV in Russia, including the purchase of expensive medicines, while only $781,000 goes to prevention.

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