Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 5, 2004|Volume 33, Number 10

U.S. and Russian organizations unite
to fight AIDS epidemic in St. Petersburg

Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) and the Yale AIDS Program along with organizations in Connecticut and Russia recently launched the St. Petersburg/New Haven Partnership for HIV/AIDS Care, Treatment, and Support.

The program, which seeks to curb the rapid spread of HIV infection and the AIDS epidemic in Russia, is funded by a two-and-a-half year grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has contracted with the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) to provide care and treatment programs in St. Petersburg and four other areas in Russia.

The partnership will be implemented by the aforementioned Yale groups, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, various community based organizations and non-governmental organizations throughout Connecticut, and the St. Petersburg AIDS Control Center, the St. Petersburg Health Committee and various St. Petersburg health and social care institutions.

At the ceremony this fall marking the launch of the partnership, Kim Blankenship, associate director of CIRA and associate research scientist in epidemiology and public health, stressed the importance of the partnership given the increasing rate of HIV infection and the growing number of AIDS cases in Russia.

While the HIV epidemic was introduced into Russia later than in other nations, it now has one of the fastest growing rates of HIV in the world, and HIV/AIDS prevalence is seriously underestimated there, noted Robert Heimer, associate professor of epidemiology, and Krystn Wagner, assistant professor of internal medicine and medical director of the Nathan Smith Clinic, who will oversee the partnership.

The majority of HIV-positive Russians became infected through injection drug use. This presents a particular challenge, noted the researchers, because many Russian healthcare professionals are reluctant to treat injection drug users. Furthermore, many people in Russia do not know their HIV status, and only 1,800 are currently receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy -- despite the fact that the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimate that 71,000 Russians will need such treatment by 2005.

The partnership's goals include training Russian healthcare professionals in HIV/AIDS clinical management; developing the HIV/AIDS healthcare system; shaping attitudes and policies relating to substance abuse; decreasing the stigmatization of and discrimination against individuals with HIV and histories of injection drug use; and emphasizing the value of integrating HIV care and prevention.

The partnership will sponsor approximately four exchange visits a year, with teams of U.S. participants traveling to St. Petersburg to train their Russian colleagues and teams of Russian participants coming to New Haven for training. The exchanges began with the arrival of a Russian team in New Haven on Oct. 3.

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Campus Notes