U.N. Says Russia,Ukraine, Estonia are in AIDS Crisis by United Nations News /Moscow Times /Washington Post 10:28am 18th Feb, 2004   17 February 2004    Eastern Europe's low HIV/AIDS prevalence could spike, UN report warns ( UN News)    Although Eastern and South Eastern Europe have a low prevalence of HIV/AIDS, three countries there have among the world’s fastest growth rates because of insufficient public awareness, frequent stigmatization and inadequate disease control policies, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says in a new report.    In the first comprehensive study of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 28 countries of East and South Eastern Europe, the Baltics and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), UNDP says 1.8 million, or 0.9 per cent of all adults in the region - mainly men under 30 - are infected with HIV/AIDS.    The report, Reversing the Epidemic: Facts and Policy Options, says the region's high-risk groups include injecting drug users, prisoners, sex workers, migrants and internally displaced people.    "Growth rates in new HIV infections reported over the last several years in Estonia, Russia and Ukraine are among the world's highest," it notes, warning that, "Upwards of one out of every 100 adults living in these three countries is now estimated to be carrying the virus - a threshold above which efforts to turn back the epidemic have failed in many other countries."    Members of high-risk groups are often subject to stigmatization, social exclusion, poverty, or incarceration, according to the report, which says their above-average prevalence of HIV has turned the region's over-crowded penal institutions into "real HIV incubators."    The study predicts that the epidemic will put new strains on already overburdened social protection systems and increased health expenditures to treat people living with AIDS could consume 1 to 3 per cent of annual gross domestic product (GDP).    Premature morbidity and mortality during the years of people's highest productive and reproductive capacities could reduce annual GDP growth by 1 per cent, a tremendous impact for any country, UNDP says.    The report recommends staging open, informative public debates where sensitive and controversial topics can be discussed, increasing financial resources for AIDS prevention, training health care workers more intensively and improving institution-building and multi-agency collaboration.    Feb. 18, 2004.    "UN: AIDS Spread Threatens Economy" by Greg Walters (The Moscow Times )    The spread of HIV/AIDS could have calamitous effects on Russia's economy by "brutally altering" the structure of the population, according to a new report released by the United Nations Development Program on Tuesday.    The report warns that GDP growth could decrease by up to 1 percent due to a higher mortality rate in the labor force, while increased health expenditures for people living with AIDS could absorb up to 3 percentage points of gross domestic product.    "It is too late to avoid a crisis in terms of human cost, and the economic costs will definitely be significant," said Shombi Sharp, UNDP assistant regional representative and one of the authors of the report.    "But Russia still has the opportunity, through effective responses, to avoid the kind of macroeconomic impact that has been experienced in other parts of the world."    A "medium" scenario, or 6 percent adult infection rate in 2015, would mean that GDP could be 10 to 12 percent lower by 2040 than it would be without the disease.    Russia's current population of about 144 million could fall as low as 100 million in a medium-case AIDS epidemic, or 97 million by 2045 in a worst-case scenario, the report states. Without the disease, the population is projected to be 117 million.    Besides reducing the country's work force and productivity, the spread of HIV would also diminish public and private savings as well as increase expenses such as wages for firms.    Industries like oil, gas and non-ferrous metals could be especially hard-hit, the report said, because their labor force is at high risk for HIV infection.    "You quite often find a lot of commercial sex activity in areas surrounding these activities, and large labor forces comprised of single men," Sharp said.    "In some of these areas, like Irkutsk and Khanty-Mansiisk, HIV infection is 300 percent or more above the national average."    Russia, Ukraine and Estonia have the fastest HIV growth rates in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The region has one of the fastest HIV growth rates in the world.    "We're hitting the tripwire of 1 percent infection rate among adults, at which there's a high likelihood of acceleration of the disease," said UNDP director Mark Brown.    While HIV in Russia has been most prominent among drug users, prisoners, homosexuals and sex workers, "the disease is spreading over from these groups to the mainstream," Brown said.    UN officials stressed that the government will need to craft new methods for dealing with the problem than it has used in the past.    "Russia is much too fond of big institutions -- particularly prisons -- for solving social problems," Brown said. "Democracy is not a prophylactic, but lack of attention to human rights is a problem."    The federal government yearly spends less than 5 rubles per person to fight HIV/AIDS, according to Mikko Vienonen, head of the World Health Organization's Moscow office. "That's the cost of a pack of Belomor cigarettes," Vienonen said. "And this is a country with a huge budget surplus.    "[AIDS] is the biggest epidemic in history. We've already gone over the Black Death in the 13th century -- this is a bigger threat."    MOSCOW, Feb. 17    "U.N. Says Russia Is in AIDS Crisis. Virus Spreading Faster in Region Than Anywhere Else " By Peter Baker. (Washington Post Foreign Service)    The United Nations warned Tuesday that the spread of AIDS through the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has reached crisis proportions and beseeched complacent regional leaders "to wake up [and] take this threat seriously" before it overwhelms them.    While the epidemic largely spared the region as it ravaged other areas in the 1980s and 1990s, AIDS is now spreading faster here than anywhere in the world. One of every 100 adults in Russia and several other countries now has the virus that causes AIDS, a higher rate than anywhere but sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, the U.N. reported.    Fueled by intravenous drug use, the rapid advance of AIDS through the former eastern bloc has stymied governments and threatens to engulf overtaxed health care systems and choke economic growth, the United Nations said. Hardest hit have been Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, while the virus continues to spread quickly in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Moldova as well, according to the United Nation's first comprehensive study of AIDS in the region.    Mark Malloch Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program, described Russia and the region as "on the edge of disaster" and said he came to Moscow "to appeal to Russians -- civil society, ordinary people, government -- to wake up, take this threat seriously and while there's still time change the trajectory of prevalence of HIV-AIDS."    "Russia has always been at its best when the times are tough and critical," added Mikko Vienonen, head of the World Health Organization's office in Moscow, who joined Brown at a news conference organized with the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency. "The times are now tough and critical."    Russia, which reported just 163 new cases of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS in 1994, had an estimated 1 million people with HIV as of the end of 2003 -- more than the United States has with twice the population. Until recently, Russia's HIV-positive population has been doubling every six months; international experts discounted a reported onetime drop in new infections in 2002 as a statistical aberration.    According to forecasts included in the U.N. report, AIDS will accelerate Russia's already dramatic population decline, costing the country an additional 9 million lives by 2045 in the most optimistic scenario and 20 million lives in the worst-case projection. Under the pessimistic scenario, AIDS would reduce Russia's potential economic output by 4 percent by 2010 and 10.5 percent by 2020.    The Russian government, already afflicted by a major health crisis exacerbated by widespread tuberculosis, syphilis, heart disease and alcoholism, has done little to fight the AIDS problem.    President Vladimir Putin mentioned AIDS only once, in a single clause, in his annual state of the nation address last year. The annual federal budget for fighting AIDS is about $4 million, about $1 million of which is targeted for prevention.    Brown offered unusually blunt criticism of Russia's political leadership. "One speech is not enough and one reference in a speech is not enough," he said. "There has to be strong leadership time after time to warn Russians that this is a threat."    Vienonen pointed out that only 1,000 Russians get anti-retroviral therapy, which can cost $6,000 to $9,000 per patient annually here. "We always know that Russia is not Africa," he said. "In this respect, Russia is Africa..
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item