| Russia
was one of the last states to have HIV arrive on its shores. The
first case was registered only in 1986. Earlier this year the
Russian government revealed the country had 31,000 HIV-infected
individuals. That number has since been revised upwards to 70,000.
The World Health Organization believes the real number is 10 times
higher. UNAIDS, the U.N. organization that combats HIV, estimates
some 300,000 Russians are infected, up from last year’s 130,000.
Russia has the highest infection growth rate in the world.
Russia differs in one very
important way: Sexual contact has not been the primary vehicle of
transmission. Ninety percent of all Russian cases contracted the
disease through intravenous drug use. Since Russia sits astride
three major heroin traffic routes, heroin is cheap, plentiful –
and it is the drug of choice for Russia’s 3 million to 4 million
drug addicts. Conservative estimates maintain 10 percent of
Russian drug users have HIV. Ninety percent are under the age of
25 (globally, the proportion is 50 percent). That means mortality
among Russia’s HIV victims will claim greater proportions of the
most productive and most reproductive members of Russian society.
Tuberculosis is far above
epidemic levels. There were 123,403 new cases of tuberculosis in
Russia in 1999, bringing Russia’s overall infection rate to 76
tubercular patients per 100,000 people, according to the Russian
Health Ministry. (Forty per 100,000 constitutes an epidemic.)
Complicating the problem, under an upcoming amnesty program Russia
will release 4,000 tubercular people this year from its TB-rife
prison system, half of whom carry drug resistant strains of TB.
The death rate from TB is higher than that of any other major
disease.
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