New hiv strain in Russia spreading rapidly – scientists

by RIA Novosti at 16/10/2013 16:56

The Moscow News

Scientists have discovered a new strain of HIV in Russia, and the virus is spreading “at a rapid rate,” the press service for a Siberian scientific research center said Wednesday.

The subtype, called 02_AG/A, was first reported in Russia’s Siberian city of Novosibirsk in 2006 and is now responsible for more than 50 percent of new HIV infections in the region, the press service for the region’s science city Koltsovo said in a statement posted on its website.

The number of HIV-positive people living in the Novosibirsk Region has leaped from about 2,000 in 2007 up to 15,000 in 2012, the statement said, citing Russia’s Federal AIDS Center.

02_AG/A might be the most virulent form of HIV in Russia, Natalya Gashnikova, head of the retroviruses department at state biotechnology research center Vektor – whose specialists discovered the strain – was quoted as saying in the statement, and could spread much faster than Russia's current leading HIV strain, subtype A(I).

The new strain isn’t limited to the vast area of Siberia, either: It has also been detected in Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya, as well as nearby countries Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the statement said.

HIV, a retrovirus that causes slow failure of the immune system, has two types: HIV-1 and HIV-2. The latter is considered less virulent and transmissible.

Scientists say HIV-1 is the most common strain, and divide it into subtypes based on various forms that are grouped in geographic regions around the world.

According to the UN, Eastern Europe and Central Asia is the only region in the world where the HIV infection is clearly on the rise – and 52 percent of HIV-positive people in that region live in Russia.

Yet the disease remains poorly understood in Russia, and according to the Koltsovo press service, research into the spread and properties of new HIV strains is underfunded.

To compound matters, Russian schools generally offer little or no sex education, a factor that is believed to contribute to a high HIV infection rate from lack of awareness about STDs and protection against them.

Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s children’s rights advocate, said in September that he opposed teaching teenagers about sexual health in school, adding that Russian literature is “the best sex education there is.”

Doctors getting $31,000 to move to rural Russia

by Anna Arutunyan at 19/09/2013 14:08

The Moscow News

Eighteen young doctors will get 1 million rubles (over $31,000) to move to rural areas in the Far East Primorye Region and work there for at least five years, local officials said on Thursday.

The doctors are the latest recruits to a federal program that aims to improve medical aid in understaffed areas across Russia by attracting specialists with payments and benefits. The federal program, called “Rural Doctor,” was passed by the Russian government in 2011 and went into effect in January 2012.

“Young specialists have been accepted into medical facilities in [eight residential areas],” according to an official statement from the head of the Primorye Region Health Department, Oleg Bubnov. “They will all get a traveling expense in cash of 1 million rubles.”

The payment will be in addition to salaries they make as doctors, which rarely reach $1,000 per month.

A total of about 100 medical specialists are expected to move to the region as part of the program, with 59 doctors already successfully recruited, according to the official statement.

Under the federal program, young medical workers under the age of 35 get an apartment or a land plot for a house, as well as 1 million rubles in cash, to work in a rural medical facility. They have to continue working for at least five years or pay back part of the money if they terminate their contracts sooner.

Since the program went into effect, about 8,000 medical workers moved to rural areas, Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova told President Vladimir Putin in July, according to RIA Novosti reports. About 5,000 more specialists are expected to take part in the program in 2013, she said.

Officially, doctors’ salaries are on the rise in Russia’s remote regions, with health officials in the Primorye Region reporting in June that average salaries totaled 34,000 rubles (just over $1,000), according to Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

But according to the same report, doctors working a single shift actually get a lot less. According to medics in the nearby Khabarovsk Region, a deputy head doctor can be making 200,000 rubles a month while an average doctor at the same hospital makes just 12,000-15,000.

During a live call-in show, President Putin said that the government allotted 40 billion rubles to be spent on federal bonuses to medical workers, but admitted that the funds were not always reaching their destinations.