Russia: HIV Epidemic Hits Hard Across Siberia

Public health experts from the University of Pittsburgh and the Russian Federation are attending a workshop designed to help develop collaborative HIV/AIDS projects in Siberia. The workshop, being held at the university's Posvar Hall, ends tomorrow. Dr. Galina Kalachyeva, head of the epidemiology department at the Siberian Center for AIDS Prevention in Omsk, noted that infections from IV drug use have increased significantly since 1996, and more than three-quarters of HIV-positive Siberians are ages 15-30. Mother-to-child HIV transmission -- which has largely been stopped in the United States -- remains a problem in Siberia, said Charles Rinaldo, a university AIDS expert. Adequate access to AIDS medicines is a problem, said Linda Frank, a workshop organizer. "In many ways it's like it was in the United States ... before we had any medicine," said Frank, the executive director of the Pennsylvania MidAtlantic AIDS Education and Training Center who just returned from the region.

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