Russia urged to confront harsh HIV/Aids realities
09/05/2008
Russia has been warned that it risks undoing the progress it has made in the battle against HIV/Aids if it fails to reach out to high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users.
UN Aids chief Peter Piot said that the country is not doing enough to ensure people who inject themselves with drugs are protected from the risk of contracting the virus.
He also drew comparisons between the former Soviet state and neighbouring Ukraine, where 80 per cent of all new infections occur among vulnerable children and young adults.
The former Soviet Union is the world's third most HIV-afflicted region - behind Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia - and while infection rates are slowing in many countries the threat posed by the scourge has far from disappeared, Mr Piot said.
"They are on the right path, the right trajectory but some difficult decisions have to be made," he told the Reuters news agency in Moscow during an Aids conference. "The region is at a critical point."
The problem of drug users is particularly pertinent in the region because of its location on the main heroin trafficking route between Europe and Afghanistan, where an estimated 92 per cent of the world's heroin originates.
In a stark message to Russian officials, Mr Piot concluded: "If you don't supply clean needles, if you don't supply methadone you can't control the epidemic."
Since 2001, the number of people living with HIV/Aids in former Soviet states has risen by 150 per cent to 1.6 million.
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