VIENNA (AP) — Eastern Europeans with HIV are urging their governments and the international community to take immediate action to fight AIDS in their region.
The activists — from Russia, Ukraine and Estonia — say their politicians don’t care that more than 3,000 people will die this week alone from the virus and that access to treatment, prevention and care is either nonexistent, or extremely limited and expensive.
They warn that their region could "just disappear from the map" in 20 years if nothing changes.
The U.N. says 1.5 million people were living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2008, and that prevalence of the virus is on the rise.
The activists spoke Wednesday during a global AIDS conference in the Austrian capital.
