Remember the optimism when the USSR opened to the free world? Who foresaw the misery ahead — degrading poverty, desperate insecurity, and rampant disease? Yet HIV is spreading rapidly in Moscow due to ballooning needle-drug use, prostitution, public ignorance, and an almost total absence of prevention efforts.
The Health Ministry announced last week that there were over 4,000 new HIV cases in Moscow alone (up 12 fold over last year) out of 15,000-plus cases in Russia. Health officials speculate, however, that these are only the iceberg’s tip, given the country’s poor data collection. So far, Russia’s official full-blown AIDS count is relatively minor — about 400 current AIDS cases plus 400 deaths — perhaps because the disease sprouted there only in 1987. But, the Health Ministry warns, that could rapidly soar to one million if the virus continues to spread at these alarming rates. Russia, despite legislative mandate, cannot afford AIDS prevention programs, as they struggle with more pressing problems.
Perhaps 70% of all new cases are in the capital, as people seek to escape the misery which dominates their lives. Rural poverty brings young women to Moscow to work as prostitutes, unaware of their risk; condoms are expensive and are unpopular with the men. Drugs are cheap and easy to get, and intravenous drugs, once unknown, have snared several million users in a short time.
The psychosocial dynamics of HIV transmission are not unknown: depression, battered self-esteem, survival sex-work, denial, escape through drugs and alcohol, immature handling of novelty and freedom. We’re accustomed to seeing this at the individual level. Here it is at the nation level.
— Sandy Bartlett, Community Information/Education Coordinator
AIDS Services of Austin
ASA Info Line: 458-AIDS, E-mail:ASA@fc.net
This article appears in July 9 • 1999 and July 9 • 1999 (Cover).