Compiled and edited by Martin Flynn
users or their sexual partners.
"We are witnessing the beginning of the Aids epidemic,"
said Dr Alexander Sidyatchenko of the Odessa Health Authority.
According to a recent UN/WHO study, an estimated one per cent of the population
of the former Soviet countries is injecting drugs.
Dr Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, who runs the drugs-related Aids programme
at the Open Society Institute, commented: "Central Asia is a timebomb
waiting to explode."
Speaking at the Aids conference in Barcelona, Dr Sempruch said: "The
HIV epidemic has been doubling in Eastern Europe every year for the last
three years. We should avoid the crisis that occurred in Africa. Eastern
Europe could be the same."
"Injecting drug users are isolated from other sections of society.
There is terrible fear because of police harassment and fear of testing
too. Repressive drug policies fuel the HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe
and Russia."
Further east into Asia, the problems are no less acute. In India, at least
four million people are believed to be infected. In China HIV infection
rates, particularly among drug users, are skyrocketing
with infection rates among heroin users in some provinces close to 70
per cent.
In Indonesia, HIV infection rates have risen in Jakarta's drug treatment
centres from 15 to 40 per cent in the last 18 months.
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Africans with HIV 'are facing starvation'
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is targeting
millions of people in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho and
Swaziland who are facing starvation following crop failures in the region.
The WFP estimates that 13 million people in the south of the continent
are at risk of starvation
following adverse weather and, in some cases, political
mismanagement.
"We are not trying to stigmatise HIV and Aids but we reckon people
infected and affected
