Russia's top Aids expert has lambasted the Kremlin's increasingly conservative agenda, saying the HIV-Aids epidemic is worsening and at least 2m Russians are likely to be infected in about five years. Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the country's state Aids centre, said the Kremlin's policies promoting traditional family values had failed to halt the spread of the deadly virus.
The Guardian quotes him as saying: "The last five years of the conservative approach have led to the doubling of the number of HIV-infected people. It has not justified itself." He pointed out that the official number of Russians with HIV has grown to some 930,000 people from around 500,000 in 2010.
President Vladimir Putin, who enjoys unstinting support from the Russian Orthodox church, has over the past years been promoting increasingly conservative values in a bid to rally support from his core constituents of middle-aged Russians and blue-collar workers.
Pokrovsky said that some 90,000 people contracted HIV in Russia last year, compared with fewer than 3,000 people in Germany, which has one of the lowest rates of HIV infection in Europe. He chalked up Germany's success in fighting Aids to drug replacement therapy for addicts – banned in Russia – as well as the legalisation of prostitution and sex education in schools. "Children are taught to use condoms there," Pokrovsky said, indicating that was hardly imaginable in modern Russia where the Orthodox church is growing increasingly influential.
This year the government plans to spend $418m to fight the disease, but Pokrovsky said in the report that the lion's share of that amount is spent on antiretroviral therapy, stressing that authorities are not paying enough attention to preventive measures including education. He said the Russian health ministry did not have a single expert in charge of HIV prevention.
According to the report, Pokrovsky said that heterosexual intercourse appears to be the most common route of HIV transmission in Russia, drawing parallels with Africa, the epicentre of the HIV-Aids epidemic.
[link url="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/15/russian-hiv-aids-epidemic-worsening-under-kremlin-policies-says-expert"]Full report in The Guardian[/link]