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Russia is proposing to ban what is called HIV / AIDS denial, while the country is struggling to manage one of the largest epidemics in Eastern Europe or Europe. Central Asia.
The Russian Ministry of Health introduced legislation this week that would ban the spread of false information about HIV, targeting people who deny it or question the link between HIV and AIDS and the ability of doctors to treat HIV. this illness.
Tens of thousands of Russians subscribe to online forums dedicated to the rejection of traditional scientific knowledge about HIV. Reports of "HIV dissidents" who recently died from complications or who refused to treat their children for the disease were in the headlines.
"The problem of denying the existence of HIV is mbadive and, with the spread of HIV in Russia, makes it dangerous for society," the Health Ministry wrote in a letter from the Ministry of Health. introduction to the new legislation, proposed earlier this week. Russian lawmakers have indicated that they will support the bill.
Nearly 1.2 million Russians are HIV-positive and another 100,000 cases were registered in 2018, according to official estimates. Only about one-third of people with the virus are on antiretroviral therapy (ART), a series of drugs used to stop its spread.
The low number of treatments is mainly due to an overburdened medical system and a lack of government awareness among HIV-positive people. In 2018, a report by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition indicated that 35 of Russia's 85 regions, where more than half of the population lives, refused to buy antiretrovirals to fund a national treatment program. Discrimination in Russia against LGBT + people, who are among those most at risk of contracting the disease, is also considered a reason why some people with the disease do not seek treatment.
Although HIV denial remains a marginal movement, it has attracted public attention in recent months. In April, two Siberian women who refused treatment would have died. One of them, a well-known activist from the Irkutsk region, reportedly refused treatment of her child, also HIV-positive. Another woman in Irkutsk was convicted of negligence for refusing treatment for her four-month-old daughter, who died of AIDS in 2018.
The movement is well represented on social media. A popular group on Vkontakte, a Russian social network called "AIDS, is the biggest hoax of the twentieth century," has more than 16,000 followers. The page contains obvious links to House of Numbers, a 2009 documentary on HIV / AIDS directed by filmmaker Brent Leung, which the New York Times has described as "a pamphlet of senseless support for the deniers of AIDS."
Russian NGOs distributed leaflets informing health care providers and social workers about how to treat HIV denials. A 2017 brochure mentioned people at risk of joining the movement: newly diagnosed HIV-positive people, pregnant women, adoptive parents of HIV-positive children, and couples where one of the partners was HIV-positive and the other was not.
Russia said it wants to reach 90% of treatment by 2020, a landmark that seems unlikely to reach.
Some civil society advocates working in the area of HIV prevention were skeptical about the effectiveness of the law in increasing the number of Russians taking antiretroviral drugs.
The main problem "is not about people refusing treatment, but the fact that there is no work of information among the most vulnerable people, among drug addicts," Anya said. Sarang, head of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, a Moscow-based NGO that campaigns for human drug policies. "There is no support for them, there is no methadone substitution treatment program, so it is difficult for people to stabilize and start antiretroviral therapy."
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