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Russia finds money alone will not stem HIV

by Staff Writers
Moscow, Aug 7, 2006
Russia's HIV and AIDS sufferers are not getting the treatment they need despite a dramatic boost in funding because of weak administration, activists will tell a major conference in Canada.

With state coffers bursting with oil revenues, this year's Russian budget allocates 20 times more money than last year's to the problem, with a total sum equal to 115 million dollars (90 million euros).

Combating HIV has been formally recognised as a "national priority".

But years of sluggish progress are taking their toll and top politicians remain reticent about AIDS, say critics.

Russian non-governmental organisations attending the 16th international AIDS conference in Toronto on August 13-18 will report on the barriers to combating the disease in such a vast and often poorly run country.

According to estimates by the Federal Centre for AIDS Combating and Prevention there are as many as 1.5 million HIV carriers in Russia -- over the symbolic barrier of one percent of the population at which combating the virus becomes a major problem.

The latest failing has been a shortage of drugs for treating HIV, which has caused several people to die in the southern city of Rostov and the insurgency-plagued North Caucasus city of Makhachkala, said Mikhail Rukavishnikov of the Association of People living with HIV/AIDS.

"Many people have had to interrupt their treatment and risk their virus transforming into a form that resists medication," Rukavishnikov said.

The reason is that provincial administrations that were financing antiretroviral drugs from their own budgets slashed funding this year in anticipation of promised federal money (which is late to come).

He says that the federal health protection agency Roszdrav announced a tender in February for antiretroviral drugs, but the results for 14 out of 26 drugs were annulled due to procedural problems.

The 12 drugs that are available are of no use because none of them can be used in a combination that is effective, said Rukavishnikov.

A new tender has been announced but provincial centres will not be supplied before September at the earliest, the Federal Centre for AIDS Combating and Prevention said recently.

"One needs to know how to manage these funds effectively," observed another activist, Igor Pchelin, of the Shagi (Steps) organisation.

"It's not enough to increase funding.... It's necessary to create a federal structure for this and associations of HIV carriers and NGOS should be involved," Pchelin said.

Meanwhile other long-standing problems familiar from other parts of the world persist.

Even when drug treatments are available, many of those who carry the virus remain ignorant about AIDS and are unaware that it is treatable.

"They never visit the anti-AIDS centres" that provide drugs for free, said Pchelin.

And despite the spread of HIV beyond the drug users who were the first main group to be infected, discrimination against carriers remains widespread: some risk losing their jobs if it becomes known that they carry the virus.

Even some doctors in provincial areas remain ignorant about HIV and fear they could be infected by their patients, say activists.

The number of officially registered HIV carriers in Russia is 341,000.

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Fear isolates AIDS sufferers in China
Qiudian Village, China, Aug 7, 2006
After years of coping with the discrimination that accompanies being an AIDS sufferer in a rural Chinese village, Cheng Xiaolan and Feng Xiaoqiao are each other's only friends.







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