HIV sufferers need drugs

  • 2001-06-14
  • Sergei Stepanov
NARVA - The Narva Doctors' Union said at a conference June 7 that, at the current rate of infection, one in every 100 Narva residents will be HIV positive by the year's end.

As of June 4, the official number of HIV-positive people in Estonia stood at 683, nearly a third of whom live in the city of Narva in eastern Estonia.

But Leonid Sizemsky, head of the contagious diseases department at Narva City Hospital, estimates that the number of HIV carriers in Estonia exceeds 1,250 and that half of them live in Narva.

The World Health Organization considers an area is affected by a disease outbreak if 65 per 100,000 people suffer from the disease. The number for Estonia is 85 and the number projected for Narva is 800.

The number of people HIV positive in Narva currently makes up about 0.8 percent of the population. In the United States they are about 0.18 percent of the population and in France 0.37 percent.

HIV and AIDS carriers in Narva range in age from 13 to 50, but mostly they are aged 17 to 22. The oldest, a 50-year-old HIV-positive man, got the virus from his son, a drug-addict, who administered a pain-relieving drug to his father using a non-sterile syringe.

According to Narva City Hospital, HIV-positive patients have received general medical treatment in the hospital since last August. Thirty have undergone surgery there.

As of the beginning of June, two people have died of AIDS in Narva. Eleven people were shown to be HIV-positive only after autopsies; they either died of drug overdoses or committed suicide.

"Patients should regularly take three anti-retrovirus medications (to help prevent them from developing AIDS), but the state is only paying for one. It plans to start paying for the second in the near future," Sizemsky said. To pay for the second medication the state will need 12 million kroons ($651,000) to 15 million kroons annually.

Only 30 (2.5 percent) of all HIV-positive people in Estonia are entitled to claim help with the cost of treatment from the national health insurance fund.

In Latvia 8 percent of HIV-positive patients get state-funded treatment; in Europe between 20 percent and 40 percent are covered. By contrast, in Japan the state pays for almost 100 percent.