Press. voanews.com.
Thirty-eight
year-old Haidar, who only wants to use his first name, began using heroin as a
teenager. Injection drug use was part of a criminal lifestyle that put him in
prison for 13 years and cost him his health. ”I learned about having HIV this
year. I have TB-HIV. That is, I have both tuberculosis and HIV,” says Haidar,
as he sits on a bed in a small room he shares at a drug addicts’ rehabilitation
center outside Moscow.
Haidar
found out he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, after arriving to get
treatment for his addiction. While the rate of HIV infections in Europe is
shrinking, the number of Russians infected with HIV is growing annually by 10
percent and in the past year, surpassed 1 million, according to groups tracking
global infection rates.
Most
acquired the virus like Haidar by sharing infected needles or paraphernalia.
Haidar says he thinks he became infected by sharing a spoon used to cook
heroin. “I always chose my companions to share it with carefully; although for
the last year or two, I was rather careless,” he says.
Epidemic
threat
It is,
unfortunately, an all too common attitude among heroin addicts. “There are a
few [people] who I know well, who are infected [with HIV],” says Haidar. “They
still continue to use drugs no matter what. They take medications, but continue
to use heroin.” A Russian drug addict holds his hands together during a rehab
session at the Vershina-Navigator Foundation's rehabilitation center outside
Moscow. The number of Russians infected with HIV is growing and has surpassed 1
million, according to groups tracking global infection rates.
A Russian
drug addict holds his hands together during a rehab session at the
Vershina-Navigator Foundation's rehabilitation center outside Moscow. The
number of Russians infected with HIV is growing and has surpassed 1 million,
according to groups tracking global infection rates. Haidar says he would have
used a clean needle exchange program if it were available; but, Russia pulled
support from such programs years ago and made opiate substitution therapy
illegal, despite its record of reducing HIV transmission.
Authorities
argue the programs encourage drug addiction and prefer to push for abstinence.
The efforts have so far failed to make a dent in what is fast becoming Russia’s
HIV epidemic. Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova this month said the
spread of HIV has become “critical” in 10 Russian regions. Health care
authorities in Russia's Yekaterinburg declared an HIV epidemic, saying 1.8
percent of the city's population are infected. Officials have since played down
the comments.
At a
second annual HIV forum Monday in Moscow, Skvortsova said the ministry's main
objective was to prevent the development of an epidemic as well as reduce
deaths from AIDS. “To prevent HIV from spreading among drug addicts, a complex
rehabilitation and re-socialization program is being implemented based on a strategy
of reducing demand or motivation, leading to a voluntary turning down of drugs
by establishing a network of specialized rehabilitation centers with
non-commercial groups and religious entities involved.”
Rehabilitation
for injection drug addicts can work, at least for those who avoid HIV and get
help before it is too late. Dmitry Baranov used to share needles with other
heroin addicts before he kicked the habit and became a volunteer at the
Vershina-Navigator Foundation helping other drug addicts. He was lucky. “Out of
the guys I used drugs with together, I can state that there were seven of us,
and just two currently remain and they have HIV. All the rest died.”
Ineffective
approach
On the
wall at the foundation’s rehabilitation center is a face mask of Russia’s
communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin with the words, “I’m also addicted.
Revolution is my narcotic!” Critics say Russia is focused too much on moral
arguments for abstinence instead of education and services.
“This is
a weak, non-effective policy,” says Alexander Savitsky, the chairman of
Russia’s Union of People Living with HIV. “One requires a direct service, a
live contact with humans. One requires training, to bring in all that to school
and to those layers of the population who are most at risk.”
In June,
they added the only Moscow group handing out clean needles and advice to
addicts on the street, the Andrei Rylkov Foundation, to its list of “foreign
agents.” The label, which evokes Cold War-era connotations of spying, means the
group received foreign funding and its activities were deemed political. Rights
groups say the label discourages cooperation and has forced some groups to
close their doors.
Russia’s
economic problems have also forced budget cuts in health care that may affect
access to needed medicine used to treat HIV. Russia’s Health Ministry cut the
budget for buying HIV medications in 2017 by 13.5 percent, reported the RBC
news website, just as more spending is needed.
Ricardo
Marquina Montanana contributed to this report.
http://www.voanews.com/a/russia-hiv/3616057.html
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