AN IRON curtain of AIDS

unable to make contact with the positive people he knows are there in the neighbouring Caucasus states of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Across the Caspian Sea in central Asia, the International HIV/Aids Alliance is helping a positive group set up in huge, oil-rich Kazakhstan. But neighbouring Uzbekistan in Central Asia saw more cases of HIV in the first half of 2002 than had been recorded for the entire previous decade.

Where to next?
One the optimistic side, there seems to be a genuine political movement rising up among positive people in some parts or the region. “Drug users used to be a counter-culture, a sign of opposition to Communism”, says the International HIV/Aids Alliance’s Slava Kushakov. “Now it’s just alienated youth. But once you get those youth volunteering at drug projects, they discover pride again.”
On the pessimistic side, there are signs of a lot more sexual transmission.
In Ukraine, sexual transmission increased from 15 per cent of cases to 38 per cent last year. A lot of it is driven by another scourge of society - commercial sex work. In Moscow, it’s prostitutes driven by poverty from Central Asia. ‘Trafficking’ of underage girls and boys is a huge social problem. Tiny

David Ananiashvili of Georgia + Group

Moldova, Europe’s second-poorest country, sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, has 1.5 million of its 4 million population working abroad at any one time - many on the streets of Berlin, Prague - and London.
“Poverty is why they work abroad,” explains Simeon Sirbu, an up-country doctor working in Moldovan schools, “But total ignorance about sex is why they catch STIs and HIV.”
Just over the border, Odessa, of all cities, is the one with the biggest reputation in the West for exporting prostitution.
“We have about 10 years,” forecasts AFEW’s Ilona van der Braak. “Because it’s such a young epidemic, we have a tiny breathing space before people start dying en masse”. We’d better pray that the former Iron Curtain countries get some help with their HIV problem before then, or the consequences to world stability could be incalculable.

If you want to send money to add to the total of $3,750 the Georgian Positive Group has ever received in funds, and possibly save a life, email David Ananiashvili at datoan@mail.ru or phone 00 995 32 253 511.