Russians drink 25% less than before – health official

by RIA Novosti at 17/10/2013 18:31

The Moscow News

The annual consumption of alcohol per capita in Russia has dropped by 25 percent in the past three years, the Russian Health Ministry’s chief narcologist, or substance abuse specialist, said Thursday.

Average alcohol consumption per capita stood at 18 liters in 2010, more than twice the level of eight considered dangerous by the World Health Organization. Now that figure is 13.5 liters, Yevgeny Bryun said.

“I don’t think that Russians drink more than Europeans or Americans. But we drink in the wrong way – we drink strong alcohol and we drink it in shots, combining it with the wrong consumption of food,” he added.

A report by the Russian Public Chamber in 2009 said that about 500,000 Russians die every year from alcohol-related causes. The Russian government has declared an anti-alcohol campaign and aims to halve consumption by 2020 and root out illegal production and sales.

143,000 Russians killed by hiv-related illnesses – official

The Moscow news, 28/11/2013

The Moscow News

More than 143,000 Russians have died from HIV-related illnesses since records started being kept, a federal AIDS research center official said Thursday.

Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the AIDS research and prevention center, said 20,000 people died from complications of HIV last year alone.

Rampant drug addiction and lack of effort in improving sex education have crippled Russia’s fight against an AIDS epidemic that has raged since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Pokrovsky said that 780,000 people in Russia are currently registered as HIV-positive, and that 51,000 of those cases were recorded this year.

A separate report published by the Federal Consumer Protection Service earlier this month said Russia’s HIV infection rate had grown 7 percent this year.

The report said drug addicts sharing needles remained the primary cause of infection, accounting for 58 percent of all new cases, followed by heterosexual sexual contact at 40 percent.

The number of drug addicts in Russia is estimated by the government to number 8.5 million people, or almost six percent of the population.

Efforts at curbing the spread of HIV have been exacerbated by the authorities’ reluctance to raise awareness about sexually transmitted diseases.

Schools generally offer little or no sex education.

Children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said in September that he opposed teaching teenagers about sexual health in school, and said that Russian literature is “the best sex education there is.”

Hiv infection rate in Russia has grown 7% this year

by RIA Novosti at 18/11/2013 16:00

The Moscow News

The HIV infection rate in Russia has grown 7 percent this year, with an average infection rate of 35.7 cases per 100,000 people, according to state statistics.

The infection rate is more than one per 1,000 people in several regions in the Ural Mountains and Siberia, including Kemerovo, Sverdlovsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk.

Sharing drug addicts remained the primary cause of infection, accounting for 58 percent of all new cases. Heterosexual contact followed with 40 percent.

The statistics were reported by the Federal Consumer Protection Service, which also monitors health and sanitation issues throughout the country.

The agency did not release the total number of HIV-positive Russians. The state-run Federal AIDS Center put that statistic at 730,000 in November 2012, the latest available.

Russia’s population is estimated at 143 million.

About 54,600 new infection cases were diagnosed in the country in the first nine months of this year, according to the consumer rights agency.

The report, published Friday, was removed from the agency’s website over the weekend, but a spokeswoman for the agency confirmed its accuracy Monday.

She said the report was pulled off for an update, expected on December 1, which is World AIDS Day.