Human rights group accuses Russian government of hampering efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS

The Russian government has been accused of exacerbating the country's deepening HIV/AIDS crisis by denying basic prevention services to those most at risk and by systematically discriminating against anyone who is infected.

In its report, Human Rights Watch (a New York based non-governmental organisation) claims that the Russian government's policy is actually fuelling the epidemic rather than helping to keep a lid on it.

Human Rights Watch says that the government's behaviour is extremely irresponsible, considering the scale of the problem.

Russian government figures (considered to be conservative) show that up to 1.2 million people in Russia have HIV/AIDS and that by 2007 that figure will have increased to some five million people.

The US Central Intelligence Agency is more gloomy. It has estimated that the current number of people with HIV/AIDS is two million and that by 2010 that figure will be eight million (out of a population of 146 million).

The Human Rights Watch report catalogues the government's response to the crisis to date and calls it wholly “misguided.”

The principal source of HIV infection in Russia is drug use, and yet, says the organisation, drug users are systematically harassed by the police in a way that discourages them from seeking clean syringes.

Police officers hang around chemists—and the few needle exchanges that do exist—looking to arrest drug users who buy syringes (which is not in itself illegal) in order to fill Orwellian arrest quotas and extort money from the drug users. As a result many drug users are frightened to seek clean needles.

Draconian narcotics laws also mean that anyone caught in possession of even minuscule quantities of drugs is dispatched to a Russian prison where there are no needle exchanges, condoms, or HIV prevention services and where the disease flourishes.

The fact that the use of methadone for heroin substitution therapy is also banned in Russia makes life even more difficult.

“Instead of learning the basic lessons of how to fight AIDS from countries that have older epidemics, the Russian government is endangering the broader population by putting up barriers to HIV prevention services for those most at risk,” said Joanne Csete of Human Rights Watch.

Drug users living with AIDS are also denied antiretroviral treatment, and HIV positive people face routine discrimination in the workplace and in access to government services.

Unlike other countries, says Human Rights Watch, Russia has not taken advantage of discounts on AIDS drugs or registered any cheap generic versions of such medicine.

Nor, added Ms Csete, is even basic information about HIV/AIDS available to the general population, owing to meagre resources.

“President Vladimir Putin offered to donate $20m (£11.2m; €16.9m) to the global fund to fight AIDS, but his own government limps along with barely a quarter of that amount devoted each year to fight the disease at home.”

Lessons Not Learned: Human Rights Abuses and HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation can be accessed at http://hrw.org/reports/2004/russia0404/