Russian Expert Calls for Cash to Curb AIDS Spread

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Russian Expert Calls for Cash to Curb AIDS Spread

Reuters - A top AIDS expert urged Russia on Monday to channel more funds into combating the disease, saying authorities should devote at least as much to the epidemic as they did to raising the wrecked Kursk submarine.

"The government spent $100 million on raising 120 bodies (from the Kursk)," Vladimir Pokrovsky, head of the Russian AIDS Centre, told a news conference in the run-up to World AIDS day on Saturday.

"In our case, the fate of millions of people is at stake."

He called on international drugs companies to follow the lead of U.S. giant Merck & Co and reduce the cost of AIDS-alleviating drugs for infected Russians.

Russia last year spent 120 million roubles ($4 million) on AIDS prevention and treatment, he said. That figure was expected to rise to between 150 million and 160 million roubles in 2002.

For Pokrovsky, the problem now was to treat existing patients, many of whom cannot afford costly medication to keep infection at bay. There is no known cure for AIDS, but drugs to suppress infection can prolong patients' lives.

"We already have at least 170,000 people with HIV/AIDS, so we therefore have the problem of medicines," he said. "And this is a very important problem, because the cost of treatment can go up to $1,000 per month per patient."

Merck Sharp & Dohme, a unit of U.S. pharmaceuticals giant Merck & Co, was the first foreign company to agree to cut the cost of anti-AIDS drugs in Russia, Pokrovsky said. The price cut reduced the cost of treatment by up to two-thirds.

But more pharmaceutical companies needed to follow that example, he said, to allow mass access to treatment.

"It will be a very difficult social question – choosing between those we help and those we don't," he said.

Russia has around 163,000 officially registered cases of AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, among its population of 147 million – a small figure compared to countries like South Africa, where one in nine people are infected.

But experts say the statistics hide a disturbing reality.

"This is not the full figure, which is why we say it is 'registered cases'," Pokrovsky said. "The real figure could be more than five times those registered."

Canadian ambassador David Irwin, announcing a 44 million rouble campaign to help contain the disease, called on authorities to match his government's contribution.

"The number of cases will likely double this year," Irwin told reporters. "I urge the Russian government to raise their contribution by the same amount."

Even according to official figures, AIDS is spreading in Russia at breakneck speed. Eastern Europe is in the grip of one of the world's fastest-growing epidemics of the disease.

In the first 10 months of the year, more than 76,000 new cases of HIV infection were recorded, Health Ministry official Alexander Golyusov said. Just over 46,000 cases were reported in the same period last year.

"Ninety-three percent of patients registered to date are drug addicts," he said. More than 80 percent were aged 15 to 30.