AIDS in Russia: Do we follow African model?

Director of the Federal Scientific Center for AIDS prophylaxis and extermination at Russia’s Ministry of Health Vadim Pokrovsky says, Russian city of Kaliningrad can serve a model for AIDS epidemic development in Russia.

Process we observe in Russia nowadays was typical of the Kaliningrad region five years ago. It was the Kaliningrad region, Russia’s most western point, that first faced HIV spreading. In Pokrovsky’s words, now AIDS infection rate has reduced there, however, another dangerous tendency has outlined. Heterosexual contact is the main way to catch AIDS in the Kaliningrad region, it has even left drug addiction behind. According to official statistics of the Center, about 10% of Kaliningrad’s AIDS-infected caught the infection through sexual contacts. Vadim Pokrovsky thinks, the tendency can be applied to the whole of Russia. An epidemic can develop in two ways: a European when only the risk group (drug addicts and homosexuals) runs the main risk of catching AIDS, and an African one when the whole population runs this risk, because the epidemic spreads through sexual contacts. According to Vadim Pokrovsky, up to 80% of the total population is AIDS-infected in some African regions. “If we take the Kaliningrad tendencies into consideration, it is logical to suppose that Russia follows the African model.”

Alexandra Kiseleva PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/north-west/2002/07/02/43543.html