U.S. Pledges to Help Russia Curb Spread of HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis

The world is still losing its fight against HIV and AIDS, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson said at a news conference held here Thursday to announce new American-Russian efforts against that disease and tuberculosis.

“We have a serious problem: 8,500 people a day die from HIV/AIDS, and 14,000 more come down with HIV/AIDS every single day,” Thompson said. “So at the present time, we’re losing the war.”

Russian Health Minister Mikhail Y. Zurabov said the number of his fellow countrymen known through testing to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, has reached 283,000. A Department of Health and Human Services news release about Thompson’s visit stated that experts believed there were as many as 2 million HIV cases in Russia.

“During today’s meeting, we have agreed on future joint steps we are going to make trying to prevent and control an AIDS epidemic in the Russian Federation,” Zurabov said. “We’ve also discussed issues regarding joint research and coordination of our fight against AIDS, and our joint activities in the area of new vaccine development and new drugs development.”

Since the epidemic began in 1981, HIV has infected more than 60 million people around the world and led to the deaths of at least 20 million, the department’s news release said. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 1 million people in the United States are infected with HIV.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome and HIV were relatively late to arrive in Russia. But since the mid-1990s the number infected has grown with a vengeance. The epidemic started among the young, largely because of a wave of drug use that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Prostitution further hastened its spread.

Tuberculosis is a particular problem in Russia’s crowded prisons, where HIV is also spread through shared needles used for smuggled-in drugs.

The fear now is that HIV has reached the critical point -- infecting more than 1% of the population -- from which it spills out from high-risk groups to the wider public in an uncontrolled epidemic.

Thompson, who is also chairman of the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, announced the approval of a $34.6-million, five-year grant from the fund to support Russia’s efforts against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The money will go primarily to treatment for people already infected, he said. The grant is expected to fund antiretroviral drugs for 5,000 patients in the first year and up to 75,000 patients within five years, Thompson said.

“We also discussed how we might be able to further harmonize our research projects as well as trying to expand the wonderful research that the Russian scientists are doing in regards to coming up with a vaccine and therapy on HIV/AIDS,” Thompson said.

The new funding brings total support for Russia from the global fund to $220 million, said Richard Feachem, the fund’s executive director, who was also at the news conference.

Thompson and Zurabov also announced agreement on efforts to try to reduce the cost of anti-HIV drugs in Russia. A patient receiving a recommended course of three drugs, usually imported, pays $10,000 to $15,000 a year, Zurabov said. Moscow and Washington have agreed “in principle” on an approach aimed at reducing that figure to between $500 and $1,000 a year, he said. Neither he nor Thompson provided details.

The global fund, a public-private multinational organization created three years ago that works with the World Health Organization, has received donor pledges of more than $5.5 billion and in turn has pledged about two-thirds of that sum in grants to recipients, Thompson said.

“We are in 130 countries and have over 250 programs going after less than three years,” Thompson said.

“The extent of this insidious disease virus requires all of us around the world to join together in this war against AIDS.”