More Than 3,500 New HIV Cases Reported in Russia Every Month

More than 3,500 new HIV cases are being reported in Russia every month, AP/Yahoo! News reports. According to the Interfax News Agency, Russia recorded 3,573 new cases of HIV in June and 3,569 new cases in May, bringing the country's official number of HIV cases to about 200,000. However, the Russian Research Center for Prevention and Treatment of AIDS said yesterday that as many as one million people could be infected with the virus, as only a "small percentage" of Russians have been tested. St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region recorded the largest proportion of new cases, with 17.7%, while 10.6% of new cases were found in Moscow. The number of people with HIV in Russia "jumped dramatically" in 1999 after increasing steadily since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and has increased "rapidly" ever since due to widespread injection drug use (AP/Yahoo! News, 8/28).