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(3 l_ O B A
Ukranian Port City Sobers Up To Reality of AIDS
by Angela Charlton
ODESSA, Ukraine (AP) - An air of shame
clings to the desolate, walled-in compound, a
former leper colony now housing AIDS
patients. Out of habit, nurses still lock patients
behind iron gates, and neighbors steer far clear
of its overgrown entrance.
"People in this country think AIDS is the
plague," said soft-spoken Nadya Stetskova, a
recovering drug addict who was propped up
on her hospital bed. "Everyone's getting it, but
no one's talking about it."
Until recently, Ukraine and other former
Soviet republics had relatively few cases of
AIDS or people with the AIDS virus, and they
did very little to help those who did. For the
most part, cash-strapped Ukraine simply dismissed AIDS as a rare "foreigners" disease.
But with the numbers rising, particularly in
the free-living port city of Odessa, the first
AIDS clinic has been established, part of a
slowly growing network of related programs.
Last year alone, the number of people with
HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, jumped from
just over 1,000 to 5,500 in Odessa. The city
now accounts for more than one-third of the
country's 14,000 people with the HIV.
Nationwide, 230 people in Ukraine have contracted full-blown AIDS.
In recent months Odessa has pioneered a
needle exchange program, an AIDS awareness
campaign for prostitutes and mobile testing
clinics, with funding help from the United
Nations commission on AIDS.
Odessa's historic harbors still teem with
people _ and drugs and diseases _ from around
the world.
"This city has every kind of reputation but
a clean one," said Dr. Georgy Pavsky, an
Odessa epidemiologist and head of the United
Nations AIDS office in Odessa.
Pavsky estimates that the official figures are
only a fraction of the actual number of HIV
cases. Ignorance, fear and social stigmas still
run too deep to encourage widespread testing,
he said.
The biggest increase, here and across the
country, has been among drug users. They
made up just 10 percent of HIV cases in
Odessa at the start of last year and more than
40 percent by the end.
Stetskova and her two roommates at the
clinic, Yulya and Valya, were once addicted to
shots of "makovaya solomka," a cheap and
readily available opium derivative.
Police call it the drug of choice in the former Soviet Union. It's often sold in individual
doses already in a needle, which is then refilled
and resold to the next customer.
"Most addicts don't realize that AIDS is a
threat. They're more afraid of the police," said
Stetskova, who was diagnosed with HIV last
fall.
While she spoke, Valya's 9-year-old son ran
by, dragging a broken plastic car tied to a
length of medical twine.
"It's not much of a life for him here," said
Valya. Her son doesn't have the virus, but she
has nowhere else to leave him while she undergoes treatment.
Talking to himself, Vova played among the
weeds on the grounds of the compound on the
edge of town, home to 50 people with AIDS
or the AIDS virus.
But the women praise the clinic, glad to be
around people who understand their disease.
"At other hospitals, they hide the AIDS
people in a forgotten corridor and everyone
looks at you like you have the plague,"
Stetskova said.
AIDS officials in the capital Kiev initially
resisted the Odessa clinic as a renegade project, but are now encouraging other regions to
follow suit.
The problem, everyone laments, is money.
The Ukrainian government is broke. Ukraine's
beleaguered hospitals say they can't afford
anesthetics or bandages, much less costly
AIDS medication or prevention programs.
"AIDS is just one of a thousand headaches
for our leaders," said Volodymyr Tarasenko of
the government's commission on AIDS.
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