HEALTH-RUSSIA: ‘Disastrous’ Rise in HIV Among Youth

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, Jun 20 2003 (IPS) - Medical authorities are considering new control measures following a sharp rise in the number of young people infected with HIV.

Tatyana Yakovleva, deputy head of the healthcare committee of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, warned a parliamentary committee last week of a "disastrous" rise in infections.

Officially, 6,645 children below 14 years of age are infected with HIV. But health experts fear the number is far higher. Authorities are worried also by the spurt in the number of cases.

Groups working on AIDS are even more worried about the danger to young people aged above 15. The most vulnerable are young drug addicts and sex workers, says Vadim Povrovsky, director of the Centre for Preventing and Combating AIDS, a Moscow-based research body.

An official from the Russian Academy of Medical Science told parliamentary hearings earlier this month that the total number of registered cases of HIV has risen to 242,754.

About 80 per cent of people infected with HIV are below 30 years of age, Povrovsky told IPS. Given under-reporting of cases, and the fact that many patients do not know they have contracted the disease, there could be more than a million young people in Russia who are HIV positive, he says.

In 2001-2002, Russia registered some 5,000-10,000 HIV infected people per month. Most of these were young people aged between 15 and 20. Health officials say 90 percent of the young who have contracted the virus are intravenous drug users.

The number of drug addicts in Russia has risen significantly since 1993. The practice of sharing needles has led to the sharp rise in HIV cases among them, officials say.

Andrei Seltsovsky, head of the Moscow healthcare department is now asking for compulsory registration and treatment of all HIV/AIDS patients. There are at present 22,000 registered cases in Moscow, but only about a thousand are coming forward for treatment, Seltsovsky told media representatives earlier this week.

"We cannot force them to undergo treatment," Seltsovsky said. "Unless compulsory measures are taken, AIDS related mortality among young people could rise 10 to15 times." Seltsovsky said the actual number of the infected in Moscow is likely to be five to seven times higher than the official figure.

Municipal authorities in Moscow put forward draft legislation last week to enable HIV tests at public schools and among applicants for government jobs.

Moscow has a budget of 60 million dollars to combat HIV/AIDS over the next three years. "We don’t have problems with more funding although treatment of just one HIV patient costs the city 500 to 1,000 dollars per month," Seltsovsky said.

Pokrovsky says such compulsory measures alone are unlikely to prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS. "Unless urgent measures are taken, with a focus on an awareness campaign among drug users, there could be five million HIV positive Russians by 2007," he says.

The young are particularly vulnerable because public awareness of the danger from AIDS is low, Pokrovsky says. Less than a fifth of the AIDS budget is being spent at present on spreading awareness of the danger of AIDS. That budget should be at least 50 per cent, he says.

The danger among the young was recognised when UNAIDS launched a World AIDS campaign in Moscow in 1998. The initiative called ‘Force for Change: World AIDS Campaign with Young People’ was aimed at increasing awareness of the devastating impact of HIV on the young. The initiative failed to bring the expected results.

So far 3,303 people have died of AIDS-related diseases, according to official records. The absolute figure of people with AIDS in Russia is low compared to many other nations, but health officials here are concerned by the rapid spread of the disease. They fear that the rise in HIV infection among the young could show up in a massive increase in AIDS cases at a later date.

Given the present estimates of HIV infections, the cost of treating AIDS cases later could be prohibitive, Pokrovsky says. Russia provides free health care, and the government would either have to foot the bill or amend legislation.