HIV outbreak among drug users

TALLINN-Estonian healthcare institutions registered 45 new carriers of HIV in northeastern Estonia in August and September, which exceeds the number of HIV carriers registered in the last three years.

Minister of Social Affairs Heiki Nestor formed a special committee last week to investigate the problem.

By Sept. 25 the number of HIV virus carriers in the region had reached 45, said Andrei Antonov, a doctor in the city of Narva. "In August we had only five infected people, but then the number began to grow," he said.

The carriers registered in the last two months are mostly intravenous drug users. The youngest is just 15 years old.

Such figures represent an HIV outbreak in the region, said Nelli Kalikova, head of the Estonian AIDS Prevention Center, a state institution established to disseminate information on AIDS and to carry out preventive measures.

"The media is not exaggerating the scale of the problem. We are now dealing with an HIV outbreak in the northeastern region," said Kalikova.

Drug users exchange information among themselves, said Antonov. "Those five August HIV carriers probably knew each other. When their fellow drug users heard the results of their AIDS tests they decided to get themselves tested," he said.

"If drug users in any other region of Estonia were tested, we might get the same sorrowful results. Such testing is unfortunately too expensive for Estonia now," said Antonov.

To prevent the virus from spreading within Narva's healthcare institutions, such institutions have been ordered by the city government to enhance prevention measures.

Nothing happens without a reason. For the last three years, the center has been stressing the importance of preventive anti-AIDS measures. "We warned the state to equip itself with a thorough knowledge of the problem in order that it be ready in the event of an outbreak. But foreign institutions have paid more attention to our problems than the government of Estonia," said Kalikova.

According to Kalikova, the approximate number of drug users can be calculated by multiplying the number of those seeking medical help in a year by 10.

"Areas where HIV infection is most common are those with a high density of people whose first language is Russian, in other words Tallinn and northeast Estonia," Kalikova said.

According to the center's statistics, AIDS has mostly been spread by sexual contact in the last ten years.