Russia’s strategies ‘failing’ to fight HIV

Russia’s HIV crisis is one of the worst in the world and the number of newly infected people has recently increased by 10 per cent.

The rise in contractions, blamed much on drug usage involving shared dirty needles,  occurred although the government doubled its budget allocated for preventing spread of the disease in the last two years.

Critics say there have been been avoidable deaths in the country because hospitals lack coherent and organised methods to treat them. They also say the government’s strategies of trying to fight drug dependency are not working either.

Neave Barker reports from Moscow.