AN IRON curtain of AIDS

are still very ignorant. If they deal with HIV at all, many think it’s still OK to prescribe AZT by itself as a treatment. There’s no pre- or post-test counselling. The general attitude is You’re

positive, get on with it’,” says Natalia Leonchuk, one of UNP+ founders.
Treatment is still almost non-existent. But UNP+ has, with the Ministry of Health, negotiated $92m from the Global Fund (GFATM) - “and we insisted that 70 per cent of that was earmarked for treatment, testing and training for doctors,” adds Natalia.
They have yet however, to see the cash, and at present HIV projects throughout the former Soviet Union exist on a variety of handouts from sources like UNICEF, Elton John, and Hungarian millionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

Countries on the edge
Further out, on the fringes of the old Soviet Empire, there are countries where just one or two brave people fly the flag for their fellows with HIV.
Anastasia Kamlyk is the one and only person in the state of Belarus to be openly living with the virus. A country of 10 million people sandwiched between Russia and Poland, it is ruled by the eccentric Mugabe-like dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. “No one wants to fund Belarus,” says Anastasia. The Belarus Positive Movement runs self-help groups, a phone line, counsellors and needle exchange on limited money from UNAIDS and the Open society Foundation, but

UNP+ members at Barcelona Conference including (centre) Natalia Leonchuk

is only able to cover a small part of Minsk, the capital. “We wrote a letter to the Ministry of Health demanding access to treatment, but never received an answer,” says Anastasia. There’s now nine people on treatment out of an estimated positive population of 15,000.
Further south there is a whole swathe of countries from the Caucasus over to Mongolia. One is Georgia: “There are 360 people officially HIV positive, but maybe 4,000 in reality in Georgia,” explains David Ananiashvili who recently attended the Glasgow HIV conference.
“Georgia is in a pre-epidemic situation as yet,” says David. “I know five on treatment. Not me!...I have a friend

who’s very ill. She needs $600 for HIV therapy. Please, can I ask you to ask Positive Nation’s readers to save her life? ” (see next page @ bottom on how you can help). David has been