MOSCOW (AP) — AIDS experts are urging Russian officials to modify their abstinence-based strategy for curbing the spread of HIV among drug addicts and other high-risk groups.
AIDS specialists meeting here say Russia should use methadone treatment and other so-called harm reduction strategies, saying HIV may be moving from addicts, sex workers and gay men into the general population.
But the country’s chief public health officer Gennady Onishchenko told a regional AIDS conference Wednesday that Russia is "emphatically against" the use of drug replacement therapy.
UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe said methadone has proven effective elsewhere and that, despite progress, Russia was in the midst of a surge in heterosexual transmission that could break out into the larger population.
