Russian male smokers complain of impotence warnings
by Anna Arutunyan at 18/12/2013 17:46
The Moscow News
R
ussian
men are asking the Health Ministry to remove warnings of impotence
from cigarette packs amid a government bid to curb smoking.
“There are a lot of complaints. For men, the impotence issue is very important, and they’re asking to remove that picture,” RIA Novosti quoted Health Ministry official Natalia Kostenko as saying. “Apparently, this has affected men’s minds a great deal and they don’t want to see these pictures on cigarette packs.”
Kostenko was detailing a slew of responses from people to pictures warning smokers about the dangers of tobacco. An anti-tobacco law banning smoking in public places went into effect on June 1. The first cigarette packs featuring illustrated warnings went on sale on June 12.
Kostenko noted other suggestions from people who said they wanted to see harsher warnings and more graphic pictures on cigarette packs, as well as hotlines for people with nicotine addiction.
About 54 percent of Russians say they don’t smoke and never have, according to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM) in December among 1,600 respondents, RIA Novosti reports. Meanwhile, a 2010 World Heath Organization study found that about 60 percent of men and nearly 22 percent of women in Russia are smokers.
143,000 Russians killed by hiv-related illnesses – official
by RIA Novosti at 28/11/2013 18:18
The Moscow News
M
ore
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.”