More than 1 million people in Russia are HIV-positive, official says

Russia's AIDS epidemic is at a dangerous tipping
point after the number of people registered HIV-
positive passed the 1 million mark, the country's
top AIDS specialist said on Thursday, warning the
rate of infection had reached record levels.
Vadim Pokrovsky, the head of the federal AIDS
center, told Reuters that the prevalence of the
disease was on the verge of becoming common
throughout the population, instead of
concentrated primarily within a certain group.
Almost 20 percent of the country's drug users and
nearly 10 percent of the country's gay people
were HIV-positive, he said. Between 55 and 60
percent of cases are linked to drug use and
around 40 percent to heterosexual sex. Gay sex
accounted for only about 1.5 percent.
Russia registered its millionth HIV-positive
patient - a 26-year-old woman in the south of the
country — on Wednesday, said Pokrovsky. But he
added the real number of HIV-positive Russians
could be as high as 1.5 million, or 1 percent of
the population, based on his and other expert
estimates.
"The epidemic is gathering strength.
Unfortunately the measures that have been
taken have clearly not been enough,"
Pokrovsky said.
He warned that Russia was "on the threshold" of
moving from a concentrated epidemic, where HIV
is highly prevalent in one subset of the
population, to a generalized epidemic, where HIV
rates among the general population are sufficient
for sexual networking to drive new infections.
"We're in a transitional phase," he said. "In
separate regions we can say there is
already a generalized HIV epidemic."
The Russian epidemic has been driven by very
harsh drug laws and a lack of harm reduction and
needle exchange programs, as well as repressive
homosexuality laws, according to UNAIDS and the
World Health Organization.
A report released by UNAIDS in 2014 called out
Russia for its "appalling record" on HIV and drug
policy. "The Russian Federation… continues to
steadfastly deny the evidence on the
effectiveness of harm reduction, and the rates of
HIV infection among people who inject drugs in
the country are among the highest in the world,"
it said.
A federal law banning "gay propaganda" has also
hindered access to HIV prevention services
among the LGBT community, according to
activists.
Pokrovsky said 204,000 people had died of HIV in
Russia since the first case was recorded in 1987.
He expected the number of new cases in 2015 to
be at least 93,000, up from just under 90,000 in
2014.
That, he said, would be the largest number of
new cases since Russia began keeping data
almost 30 years ago.
The escalation comes as Russia struggles
financially, beset by low oil prices, Western
sanctions and a falling ruble.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called
last October for a series of urgent measures to
respond to the growing epidemic. The
government plans to spend 40 billion rubles
($475.20 million) on fighting HIV/AIDs in 2016.
Pokrovsky said 100 billion rubles was needed.
Government data shows 24,000 HIV-positive
people died in 2014, the last full year for which
data is available. Of those, around 12,000 died as
a direct result of AIDS. Pokrovsky said the real
number who died from AIDS was likely to be
higher.
He said he expected data for 2015 to show a
5-10 percent increase in the number of deaths.