| Needle exchanges used
to be banned, and methadone treatment still is.
A programme of forcible HIV testing for arrested drug users, which
in Soviet times led to Siberian exile for those with HIV, led to
an extreme reluctance to seek help. Though the programme was stopped,
HIV tests still signify state control and incarceration to many
people.
More scary still, a recent UNICEF report forecast that five to eight
million Russians and 1.5 million Ukraininans could have HIV by 2010,
and noted that already up to one-third of prospective military conscripts
in Russia are deemed unfit for service because of HIV and chronic
hepatitis from drug use. The document concludes that HIV/Aids could
become a real security threat.
Faith versus Futility
Russian first lady Ludmila Putina has been seen cuddling HIV positive
babies in a Moscow hospice. The will may be there. But the money
is not.
The real driving force behind the exploding drugs and HIV epidemic
is the whole problem of attempting to live among the economic wreckage
of the former Soviet Empire. Communism may not have earned dollars
or respected liberty but it provided jobs, free basic healthcare,
summer camps for bored teenagers. Youth unemployment in Ukraine
now runs as high as 80 per cent. ‘No future’ isn’t
just a statement of teenage rebellion here.
“If I take 10 of my friends, maybe two have a job,”
says Marina Braga, aged 25. And she’s a graduate psychologist.
Along with her colleague Natasha Dvinskiykh, they’re volunteering
for six months at Crusaid in London as part of a youth exchange
scheme. Fresh from college in Odessa, Marina joined a project at
the Faith Hope Love Centre (FHL). FHL runs clean-needle projects
in several locations.
Natasha works at another group called Charity - Blagodiynist in
Ukrainian - in Nicolayev about 100 miles east of Odessa: “We
get anything from 10-70 people in two hours at one of our harm-reduction
centres...it’s mainly people in their late 20s and 30s. Not
many very young people are coming yet. They don’t want to
confess they’re ‘narkomen’. But they are aware
the problem often starts with children as young as eight.
The projects are not ‘exchanges’ as such - no one will
bring used needles back because they’re too |
