Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : Trinity Biotech (TRIBY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Leslie S. Feinberg who wrote (7454)	11/28/1997 10:53:00 AM
From: AgAuUSA	Respond to of 14328

New illicit drug methods may be boosting the spread of AIDS in Russia Copyright c 1997 Nando.net Copyright c 1997 Reuters GENEVA (November 27, 1997 10:53 p.m. EST nando.net) - One reason the AIDS epidemic may be spreading so rapidly in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union is that some producers of illicit drugs have been putting blood into drugs to test their quality, U.N. experts said Thursday. The heroin-like products, which may contain blood infected with the lethal HIV virus, are injected by the unsuspecting user who becomes infected with HIV even if he uses a sterile needle. Statistics released in Moscow on Thursday showed an almost fourfold increase in the number of new HIV infections in the first 10 months of the year compared to the same period of 1996. A health ministry official told Interfax news agency some 4,200 new cases were recorded between January and October, bringing the total number of cases in Russia since the first HIV victim was identified in 1987 to 6,648. Ministry officials admit such figures probably underestimate the problem, in which drug injection plays the major role. One expert estimate earlier this year forecast a possible 800,000 HIV cases in Russia by the year 2000. Dr. Bernhard Schwartlaender, senior epidemiologist at the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS, and Dr. David Heymann, head of the emerging diseases division at the World Health Organization (WHO), expressed alarm over the new drug production method. It was reported at a meeting in Geneva a few weeks ago by Vadim Pokrovsky, chief of laboratory for AIDS epidemiology and prevention at Russia's AIDS Center, according to the experts. They feared it would be difficult to reach underground drug producers in former East bloc states to educate them about the danger in using blood to make heroin and heroin-like products. "It was a shocking new phenomenon for us, because our nice messages might not be that valid for this part of the world," Schwartlaender told a news conference. "This is a very recent finding." He later told Reuters: "This may explain why HIV is spreading dramatically in some communities. It holds true not only for Russia, but the Ukraine and other parts of the region." The two experts revealed the disturbing news a day after the Geneva-based AIDS program issued its annual figures showing that 16,000 people are infected worldwide each day with HIV, which causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). More than 30 million adults and children have the infection and the number could soar to 40 million by the year 2000, it said. An estimated 2.3 million people died of AIDS last year. The report also said that drug injection was behind the "dramatic surge" in HIV infection in several Eastern European nations, accounting for the majority of the 100,000 new infections estimated to have occurred in the region this year. Russian health officials have told the U.N. AIDS program that there about 350,000 regular drug users in the country, many of them sharing injecting material, according to the report. In Ukraine, where about 70 percent of infections have been in drug users over the last three years, 25,000 cases of HIV infection have been reported so far. Half have been in 1997. Schwartlaender, who is German, said: "The epidemic in Eastern Europe is very recent and hits an area in the world that is not well prepared to monitor the problem or cope with it." "What happens is that because of very limited resources to produce the drugs there, sometimes they test the quality of the drugs by putting in blood. It is a very simple test. If the blood doesn't go bad basically, then you can use the drug. If there are too many acids in there, the blood would coagulate and then you couldn't use or sell it (the drug)," he added. "By doing that...you actually infect the drugs that are then sold. This could be one of the explanations why in these little pockets it's really spreading dramatically." By STEPHANIE NEBEHAY, Reuters