Basic HTML Version
With the Sochi Winter Olympics now
on, the eyes of the world’s media
are on Russia. In the run-up to the
games, much of the press focused
on the country’s legislation banning
the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality
and the rising levels of homophobic
rhetoric and violence that followed,
leading some people to call for a
boycott of the games. Less has
been written about the plight of
another of the country’s
marginalised groups, however.
According to Harm Reduction
International’s most recent
Global state
of harm reduction
report, there are an
estimated at 1.8m injecting drug users
in Russia, more than 37 per cent of
whom are infected with HIV, while
opioid substitution therapy remains
steadfastly unavailable.
‘The government thinks that the
main threats to the country are gay
propaganda and opioid substitution
treatment (OST), things like that – that
they contradict our traditional values
and we should oppose them,’ Anya
Sarang of the Moscow-based Andrey
Rylkov Foundation for Health and
Social Justice tells
DDN
. ‘OST is still
unavailable and government opposition
to it remains very vocal and strong.’
Given the weight of international
evidence, how does the Russian
government justify its position on OST?
‘Basically they say that it’s a bad idea
to replace one drug with another, and
that substitution therapy is not
effective,’ she says. ‘The chief
narcologist of Russia says we don’t
need this therapy and instead they put
a lot of effort into naltrexone
programmes and all kinds of antagonist
treatment. Naltrexone is much more
expensive, but they say it’s the Russian
way to treat addicts. But even these
programmes are very few, and go in the
face of clinical trials – if they are
available they’re very expensive and so
not many people can afford them.’
Although there are some harm
reduction services operating in the
country, they remain ‘politically
marginalised’, says HRI, with national
drug policy depicting needle and
syringe exchange programmes as ‘a
threat to effective drug control’.
‘There are a few needle exchange
programmes,’ says Sarang. ‘We
managed to keep funding from the
Global Fund [to fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria] for this, but
I don’t even know how many of them
are still working. Our organisation runs
its own needle exchange, needle
distribution programme and street
outreach work in Moscow, but we get
nothing from the Russian government
– the funding comes from the Open
Society Foundations, the Levi Strauss
Foundation, people like that. It’s all
private foundations, as well as some
remaining money from the Global
Fund project, but now Russia isn’t
even taking the money from the
Global Fund, so I don’t know how
long that will keep running.’
In fact, the government’s antipathy
towards harm reduction even extends
to attempting to ban the Andrey
Rylkov Foundation from publishing
information about methadone on its
website and passing an order to close
down the site a couple of years ago, a
move described as ‘totally
unacceptable’ by Human Rights Watch
(
DDN
, June 2012, page 5). ‘They still
don’t like it,’ says Sarang. ‘We went to
the national courts but they ruled in
support of the Federal Drug Control
Service that we cannot place any
information on methadone on our
website – even information from UN
agencies like WHO or UNAIDS. It’s
very oppositional to the international
position on substitution treatment.’
Despite the harassment, however,
the foundation manages to keep the
site going, alongside its outreach and
other work. ‘We just had to move the
website hosting from a Russian
provider to an American provider so
we still keep all this information, but
now they have a new internet law
which basically allows Russian officials
to block access to any site they don’t
like. They haven’t done it to ours yet
but it’s possible, and without any legal
procedure. So I’m not sure how long
we’ll be able to provide this.’
The consequences of the
government’s policies are becoming
increasingly stark, however. According
to UNOWED, the Russian Federation,
US and China account for almost half
of the people in the world who inject
drugs and are living with HIV (21 per
cent, 15 per cent and 10 per cent,
respectively), while Russian health
watchdog the Federal Surveillance
Service for Consumer Rights and
Human Welfare says that more than
54,000 new HIV cases were registered
between January and September last
year alone, up more than 7 per cent on
the corresponding period in 2012.
Unsurprisingly, nearly 60 per cent of
the new cases were the result of
injecting drug use, and the Russian
Federal AIDS Center states that the
country now has the fastest-rising
infection rates in the world.
While the run-up to the Winter Olympics has seen outcry over Russia’s
anti-gay legislation, less has been said about the country’s treatment of
its drug users.
DDN
reports
News focus |
Analysis
OLYMPIAN STRUGGLE
6 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| February 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
‘The chief narcologist of Russia says we don’t
need this therapy and instead they put a lot
of effort into naltrexone programmes and all
kinds of antagonist treatment. Naltrexone is
much more expensive, but they say it’s the
Russian way to treat addicts.’
ANYA SARANG