April 5, 2006
"Over 100 new cases of HIV infection [are] registered in Russia daily, and the epidemic is affecting mostly the youth, children, and women," according to Sanjeev Kumar, the coordinator of UNICEF's office for Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Half of the new cases registered in Russia in the past two years were women, Kumar said in an interview conducted at a St. Petersburg meeting this week attended by Health Ministry officials from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine as well as UNICEF and World Health Organization representatives.