HIV-infections on the rise in Dagestan

Dagestan, which is among sad leaders in Southern Russia by the number of HIV-infected patients, has increased the score still more, the local "Rospotrebnadzor" (Russian Federal Agency on Consumer Supervision) branch reports.

According to the source, within 10 months of 2010, 146 cases of new HIV-infections were recorded among the residents of the republic, which is by 2.8 percent more than within the same period of last year.

The total republic's record of this disease makes about 1600 cases.

Despite physicians' efforts, Dagestan remains among most unsafe regions in the country in terms of HIV morbidity.

Over the entire period of monitoring, HIV-infected mothers gave birth to 105 children, of whom HIV infection was confirmed in 9 children. In total, Dagestan lost, for various reasons, 283 HIV patients, while the HIV infection proper caused 66 deaths.

Infecting during drug use is still the dominant way of HIV-infection transmission. Such recorded cases make about 66 percent of all infection cases. About a quarter of infections resulted from sexual contacts.

Meanwhile, local AIDS patients are sharply negatively treated by the society. Physicians say that it is a serious barrier to effective prevention, testing and treatment of HIV infection.

Within the World Day of Fighting AIDS, Dagestan holds awareness-raising activities among young people. The Dagestan State Medical Academy will hold courses on HIV and AIDS.

Dagestani bloggers assert, in their comment of AIDS in the country, that the drug problem is the main one. For example, blogger surgeon05, himself a student at the Academy of Medicine, wrote: "The city of Derbent is in the first place by the number of HIV-infected patients. Five times more patients are there than in Makhachkala, while its population is five times less. Patients make about 1 percent of the total city population.

The blogger tells about a case when three parishioners of the Derbent-based Juma Mosque were HIV-infected. It turned out that all the three went through the rite of "shahsey-Wachs" (one of the rituals of self-flagellation in the Shia: the believers come to the Imam one by one, and he beats them on the head with an axe or knife until bleeding. The ritual is executed as a sign of mourning over the loss of Prophet Muhammad's grandson, - note of the "Caucasian Knot").

"There was a big scandal; and, as they say, later the Shia Imam was forbidden to practice that ritual," wrote the blogger.

Another blogger from Dagestan under the nickname magia05, confesses that because of the risk of AIDS he is afraid to go to his dentist.

"Being a doctor myself, I hear all the time about infections in dentistry, endoscopy, even my mother needs dentistry, but I can't dare sending her to the dentist's," the blogger wrote in his LiveJournal.