MOSCOW: One in 20 Russian adults will be infected with the HIV virus within five years, threatening a massive epidemic in Europe. This is according to an independent survey conducted by British scientists.
Researchers at the Imperial College, London, have been studying the likely spread of HIV in Russia and have concluded that 5 per cent of the adult population will be HIV-positive by 2007.
“This means four million adults will develop Aids,” said one doctor, who added that there was no upper limit. “It could easily be a lot worse — at least double. And these people will die within 10 years.”
The results of the Imperial College study — the first independent report into the virus commissioned and assisted by the United Nations Aids programme, UNAids — will be presented at a World Health Organization conference in Barcelona in July.
Experts say HIV has spread most quickly in the last three years among drug users who share needles. But they fear the virus is spreading to the general population through heterosexual sex, and that it may “mushroom” in the next decade, leading to infection rates similar to those in Africa.
“Our study was focused on the behaviour of drug users in Russia,” said Nick Grassley, who did the research at the college’s department of infectious diseases and epidemiology. “But drug users have sex with non-drug users and they rarely use condoms. Infection rates of sexually transmitted diseases are a hundred times higher in Russia than in Western countries, and this contributes to the spread of HIV.”
Grassley added that a third of drug users funded their habit through prostitution, spreading HIV. Security experts are now analysing the impact of the large numbers of eastern European women who work in the sex industries of Berlin, Amsterdam and London.
The estimate comes weeks after the World Bank delivered a stark warning to President Vladimir Putin’s administration that the country’s economy would shrink by 4 per cent if HIV continued to spread at the current rate. “HIV is a time bomb,” said one World Bank official.
Putin has been criticized for inaction over HIV. Analysts say Russia does not want to admit HIV is a problem because it might deter investment and further restrict the movement of Russians within Europe.
Health workers are also fiercely critical of the current HIV strategy. In Moscow, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is encouraging adults to abstain from sex rather than use condoms — a practice frowned on by Russia’s Orthodox Church.
Russia spends the bulk of its meagre $5 million annual HIV budget on treatment, but experts warn that to avert disaster it urgently needs to invest more in safe sex education. “The programmes now focus largely on treatment and not prevention. Treatment costs $10,000 a patient and is funded by international donors, not by the Russian government,” said an Aids worker.
In 1999, the CIA considered HIV a major security risk for the West and warned that by the end of this year two million Russian adults could be infected. The number of cases of HIV officially registered in Russia has nearly doubled each year since 1997.
Urban Weber, a technical adviser on HIV for UNAids, said that “Ninety per cent of Russian HIV cases caught the disease since 1999. This means that the first wave of people will start arriving in hospital in three years. (Right) now there is no visible problem, and this might be the reason why it is getting little attention.” Weber added that Russians were not being informed of the risks.
The infection also poses a risk to neighbouring states. “We know that HIV spreads along routes used by truckers and sex workers,” said Weber. “We do not have exact figures on this, but Germany should be highly aware of the potential for a problem. The economic decline in eastern Europe sends sex workers to border areas and westwards.” An official at the German embassy in Moscow added HIV in Russia was “of grave concern” to his administration.
Security experts are giving particular attention to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast. A confidential intelligence report seen by The Observer estimates Kaliningrad is home to 20 per cent of Russia’s HIV cases. “It’s too close to Berlin for their comfort,” added a source.
HIV rates are highest in Moscow. HIV workers in the city have seen the virus transfer from drug users to the general population since the summer of last year.
Dima Blagovo works for the community project, “Return to Life.” Eight months ago, a woman called Ela, 22, came to their offices. “She was worried that she had caught HIV. At first we did not believe her when she said she did not inject drugs, but she insisted. She said she had casual, unsafe sex with a man in a field once. She wanted a test. He was a user, and now she is HIV-positive,” she said.
There are now 195,000 registered cases of HIV in Russia, and UNAids estimates that up to 1.2 million people may have the virus.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.