U.N. Health Agency Begins Drive to Combat AIDS in Eastern Europe

The World Health Organization is planning a new campaign to fight AIDS in Eastern European countries, which only recently began reporting cases of the deadly disease, officials said Friday.

Dr. Jonathan Mann, head of the U.N. agency’s AIDS program, said East Bloc countries form the “new frontiers of the global epidemic” that has claimed hundreds of thousands of victims, primarily in the Americas, Africa and West Europe.

Mann told a news conference that Romania was expected to be the worst-hit country in Eastern Europe because of the large number of children infected by contaminated blood and needles.

Dr. David Heymann, a WHO specialist who returned late Thursday from a visit to Bucharest, said about one-third of the 1,500 Romanian children screened for the disease were infected with the HIV virus.

Another WHO team will travel to Romania next week to begin making plans for a program to fight the disease there, Mann said. WHO has already sent 100,000 screening kits to Romania, and will ask European governments to supply other equipment and medicines.

WHO is also concerned about developments in other countries, Mann said, citing signs that drug users in Poland have become infected with the HIV virus, which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Priorities of the WHO campaign include improving medical care in Eastern Europe, ensuring the use of sterile needles in hospitals, counseling victims and their families, and providing better training of medical workers.

Mann said that, by the end of 1989, about 300 AIDS cases had been reported in Eastern European countries. Albania was the only country in the region with no registered cases.