HIV news: DC disaster & Russia's mistakes

HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C. Hits 3%

Considered a 'Severe' Epidemic, Every Mode of Transmission Is Increasing, City Study Finds

By Jose Antonio Vargas and Darryl Fears

Sunday, March 15, 2009

"At least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the 1 percent threshold that constitutes a 'generalized and severe' epidemic, according to a report scheduled to be released by health officials tomorrow.

That translates into 2,984 residents per every 100,000 over the age of 12 -- or 15,120 -- according to the 2008 epidemiology report by the District's HIV/AIDS office.

'Our rates are higher than West Africa,' said Shannon L. Hader, director of the District's HIV/AIDS Administration, who once led the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's work in Zimbabwe. 'They're on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.'" 

....

"More than 4 percent of blacks in the city are known to have HIV, along with almost 2 percent of Latinos and 1.4 percent of whites. More than three-quarters -- 76 percent -- of the HIV infected are black, 70 percent are men and 70 percent are age 40 and older.

Heterosexual sex was the principal mode of transmission for blacks with the disease, 33 percent. Men having sex with men was the chief mode of transmission for white residents, 78 percent; and Latinos, 49 percent. Black women represent more than a quarter of HIV cases in the District, and most, about 58 percent, were infected through heterosexual sex. About a quarter of black women were infected through drug use." .....

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From SAIS Next Europe: PostGlobal on washingtonpost.com

Russia's Misguided Effort to Stop HIV

By Maria S. Stoyadinova

"The HIV epidemic in Russian continues, despite the nation's efforts to expand treatment. Unfortunately, those efforts aren't focusing on the primary source of the problem -- injecting drug users."

...

"According to a report, sponsored by the Open Society Institute, between 2006 and 2007 Russia actually decreased the number of government-funded needle exchange programs from 15 to 3, despite the fact that the majority of drug users in Russia (of which there are between 3 and 6 million) fall within the IDU category. At the same time, substitution therapy is currently forbidden in Russia and is facing very strong political and scientific opposition, even though the method is deemed highly successful in the treatment of heroine addiction by the international medical community."