RUSSIA: The United Nations said yesterday that Russia, Ukraine and EU candidate Estonia have some of the world's fastest growing rates of HIV and AIDS infection, and would suffer severe social and economic damage if their leaders did not wake up to the danger.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) said one in every 100 adults in the three nations had HIV, a level seen as critical in other nations that had struggled to contain a surge in infection rates.
"It is already too late to speak of avoiding a crisis in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States," said Mr Kalman Mizsei, the UNDP's assistant administrator for Europe and the CIS.
The UN estimates that up to 280,000 people in the CIS and Eastern Europe contracted HIV last year, and that some 1.8 million people in the region carry the virus. Only 7,000 of the 80,000 people who require treatment are receiving it, the study of 28 nations found.
"Without an immediate, accelerated and significantly scaled up response by governments and other actors, HIV/AIDS risks undermining and even reversing human development gains across the countries of Eastern Europe and the CIS," it said.
The prognosis for Russia was particularly dire, showing that, in the severest scenario examined, AIDS could rob the country of 20 million lives and 14 per cent of gross domestic product by the middle of the century.
"With this 1 per cent infection rate, all the epidemiologists will tell you, you are close to the trigger of a major expansion," said Mr Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UNDP.
While Estonia suffered an alarming infection rate, other states set to join the EU in May had shown it was possible to reverse the trend, the report said, praising the efforts of Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.