The Consultation was organized by the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development, Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-being, Federal AIDS Centre and UNAIDS. Around 100 health care professionals took part in the conference including representatives of the All-Russia Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, and members of civil society from 23 Russian regions.

 

The meeting provided an opportunity to address most urgent issues of HIV/AIDS prevention in Russia. Thanks to the National Priority Health Care Project and political will Russia has made a significant progress in meeting the targets of universal access. Last year 55,000 people received treatment, while 24 million were screened for HIV. This year for the first time ever 400 million rubles (about $14 million) of federal budget were earmarked for HIV prevention, which marks 200 million rubles ($7 million) increase against last year.

 

However in spite of increased spending and widening coverage of HIV prevention programmes among vulnerable groups, young people and general population, the number of new HIV infections in Russia does not reduce and accounts for almost 40,000 a year. It confirms the need to increase the coverage of key populations by scientifically-grounded prevention methods and ensure quality of services provided.

 

The situation calls for identifying weak components in the prevention work and stepping up its efficiency by introducing specific measures. Alexander Goliusov, head of HIV/AIDS department of Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-being, said:

 

"There are about 400 prevention projects carried out within the framework of the National Priority Health Project. However the HIV epidemic keeps on spreading. While progress has been made in treatment, screening and the prevention of HIV mother-to-child transmission, other HIV prevention programmes need improvement.”  

 

45% of all country’s prevention efforts are aimed at vulnerable populations. 55% of the projects focus on various kind of support for people living with HIV/AIDS. Russia implements different successful innovative programmes. However the conference emphasized that most of the projects do not go beyond the stage of pilot efforts, thus the population coverage by prevention measures remains insufficient. Various groups of young people are not engaged by prevention work. In 2007 only 33.8% of young people of aged 15-24 had correct understanding of HIV infection. The goal for 2010 is set at 95%.

 

“Russia made a substantial progress towards a number of indicators of Universal Access mainly in the field of treatment. Regretfully, as it is in many other countries, achievements in widening prevention programmes especially among vulnerable populations and the youth are lagging behind the advances in treatment,” said Marina Semenchenko, acting team leader of the UNAIDS office in Russia. “At the meeting Russian experts frankly discussed various viewpoints of efficient and not efficient measures of prevention, and what could be done to achieve tangible results of prevention work.”

 

The discussion also addressed the issue of introducing a sustainable HIV prevention programme in the secondary school education system. Currently information on HIV/AIDS, the ways of transmission and prevention is included in such schools subjects as Biology, and Health and Safety; however they do not provide an adequate and up-to-date understanding of the problem. 

The meeting concluded that the bottleneck of prevention work was interagency collaboration and poor engagement of the Drug Service.

 

The experts spoke at length about prevention work among vulnerable populations, such as IDU, CSW, MSM and prisoners.

 

The debates resulted in a resolution with recommendations on a range of requisite measures, in particular the need to elaborate a National HIV Prevention Concept.   After finalizing the draft resolution with the participants of the meeting, it will be submitted to the Governmental Commission on the Issues of Prevention, Diagnostics and Treatment of Decease Caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV Infection).

 

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