HIV test for long-term visa

Thu Apr 22 17:30:41 UTC 2004

Dear SEELANGS-ers

MANY thanks for all of your responses regarding HIV tests. On the subject of
HIV in Russia, I thought I¹d pass along this item from the UN Wire Service
(from Wed, 21 April).

Gratefully,

Nicole

Russia Not Taking HIV/AIDS Threat Seriously, Report Says

While the HIV caseload in Russia has jumped from 163 in 1994 to an estimated
1 million by the end of last year, President Vladimir Putin has taken little
action to tackle the epidemic, USA Today
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-19-russia-aids_x.htm>  reported
yesterday.

Although a U.N. report in February suggested that 9 million Russians could
die of AIDS by 2045, government funding is only about $4 million  a budget
that would pay for medicine for just 600 patients a year.

Experts blame the HIV/AIDS explosion in part on Russia's marginalization of
groups that have high HIV rates, such as drug addicts and commercial sex
workers.

As many as 80 percent of the country's HIV/AIDS cases are drug-related, but
it has only 59 government centers for as many as 4 million intravenous drug
users.  Soviet-era prohibitions on virtually all controlled substances make
substitution therapy for addicts nearly impossible and strict
criminalization of drug infractions puts even more AIDS sufferers behind
bars.

The U.N. study found a "direct causality between the seriousness of the AIDS
crisis and the degree of respect given to human rights," Marta Ruedas of the
U.N. Development Program told USA Today.

President Putin, meanwhile, has shown no commitment to fighting the
epidemic. 

"Up to now, I am not sure that our president knows enough about HIV/AIDS,"
said Vadim Pokrovsky, Russia's top AIDS researcher.  "There hasn't been a
clear speech or phrase that allows us to say that our president understands
HIV/AIDS problems.  Only a very few times, maybe once or twice, he has
mentioned it in his speeches."

International organizations and foreign governments have been more
forthcoming in providing HIV/AIDS assistance to Russians.  Last year, the
World Bank agreed to loan Russia $150 million to fight AIDS and
tuberculosis, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
<http:///>  has awarded nearly $90 million to five nongovernmental
organizations in Russia.  The government is drafting a new grant proposal to
the fund.

"It is a significant improvement for prevention," said Pokrovsky.  "But, of
course, it is necessary to get more money and the main source is that state
budget.  We need to influence our Parliament to give us more money."

To that end, diplomats and AIDS experts are pursuing a two-pronged strategy
 trying to convince Putin of the scale of the crisis, perhaps by sounding
alarms over its potential to harm the economy, and building momentum through
nongovernmental organizations funded by foreign donors that are reaching out
to drug addicts and other at-risk groups.

Dmitry Blagovo, who runs a program in a Moscow suburb that helps addicts and
provides them with clean needles, said the project has become more accepted
by local police and officials since its inception.

"They [local police] hassled us for about six months until they figured out
we weren't going out into the streets to sell drugs," he said.  "After that,
they seemed to decide, 'These guys are OK.'"

Faina Guskova, a government administration adviser in the industrial Moscow
suburb of Mitischi, agreed that progress is being made, at least on the
local level.

"At first, we had problems," she said of the city's efforts to combat AIDS.
"People were very reluctant to admit us to schools.  The topic was
forbidden, particularly if it concerned HIV infection.  But now, they've
become interested in it and teachers themselves ask us to come.  I guess the
people's psychology is changing."

Officials in Mitischi have been willing to taking tough measures against HIV
in part because of the suburb's longtime problems with the virus and
widespread drug addiction, according to U.N. officials (Bill Nichols, USA
Today, April 20).

"A very big increase in drug use some years ago" in St. Petersburg,
meanwhile, has contributed to that city's unusually high HIV rate, according
to Alexander Tsekhanovich, president of the NGO Humanitarian Action.

A joint research project conducted by Humanitarian Action and another NGO,
Stellit, as well as the St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute found that 26,000
of about 260,000 Russians who are registered as HIV-positive live in St.
Petersburg and that almost half of prostitutes there are infected, nearly
all of whom are said to be drug users (Simone Kozuharov, St. Petersburg
Times <http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/962/top/t_12290.htm> , April 20).

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Dr. Nicole Monnier 
Assistant Professor of Russian                          phone: 573.882.3370
Director of Undergraduate Studies (Russian)     fax:  573.884.8456
German & Russian Studies Dept.
415 GCB
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO  65211

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