An international AIDS conference opened in Barcelona last Sunday, July 7th. While many are aware of the fact that the epidemic is raging throughout Africa at an alarming, almost incredibly fast rate, AIDS is not, nor has it ever been solely an African problem. In North America, after a period of intenese education within and for the gay community it seemed that the spread of HIV was being checked. New medications and drug cocktails gave false confidence, and now AIDS is on the rise in North America once again. Even with all the information available the disease is being spread, and not only among drug users and the gay community but among the heterosexual as well.

According to a report tabled before the conference by UNAIDS, the geographical problem area that many are unaware of is Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In fact, the international experts at UNAIDS say that AIDS is raging there: Eastern Europe in particular is experiencing the fastest growing AIDS epidemic in the world.

One wonders how Ian Fleming’s suave, cosmopolitan and debonair hero James Bond would tackle this fact. No longer would he be looking for a fellow secret agent from Russia to provide him with love - even if 007 would be prepared with a suitably superagent sized prophylactic (moistened, not lubricated), and appropriately sexually stirred, he would no doubt be be shaken by the latest statistics.

New reported HIV cases in Russia are doubling annually, and the disease has begun to spread from intravenous drug users to the wider population. In this sense the development of the epidemic in Russia has differed from Africa (bisexual then heterosexual transmission accounted for the first surges) and North America, where, rightly or wrongly it was perceived as foremost a homosexual disease (for some, like teleevangelists a regular source for hell and-brimstone sermon materials). The general North American perception and complacency allowed for the disease to enter quietly into vanilla flavoured heterosexual suburbia from the rainbow colured gay ghettoes. The UNAIDS report addresses the trends of the epidemic in Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, where, again, AIDS was once spread mostly by drug users, almost 25 percent of infections now are the result of heterosexual contact. This makes Ukraine the most affected country in all of Europe, with an estimated 250,000 cases. And the majority are women, catching the disease through sexual transmission. The infecting partners may be bisexual or drug users, often picking up the habit either in jail or in the military, according to experts.

AIDS is also racing through Central Asia - Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but most notably in Kazakhstan, with 1175 HIV infections reported in 2001. The key word here is reported infections. Russia leads the entire region, with diagnoses almost doubling annualy since 1998, and a reported total of 173,000 cases in 2001, up from nearly 11,00 in 1993. These totals are viewed with skepticism: actual numbers are believed to be quadruple these figures. Certainly not yet Africa or North America, but coming close. Lest Balts think that this is a slavic problem, AIDS is on the rise in the Baltics too. Cynics may point out that Estonia and Latvia, the two Baltic countries singled out in the UNAIDS report have considerable Russian populations, thus possibly it is only a Russian “import” there too.

Still, be that as may, - one only need look at Estonia. If memory serves, the first AIDS case in Estonia was diagnosed during the Soviet occupation. According to the UNAIDS report, there were only 12 people infected in Estonia with HIV in 1999. Thus it is scary to see the explosion in Estonia of AIDS in two years to 1,474 cases in 2001. Latvia has also seen a similar, yet somewhat less intense surge from 25 in 1997 to 807 cases in 2001.

In Estonia, as a glimpse of any Tallinn guidebook shows, westernization has meant the proliferation of strip bars and escort services. Many travellers to Tallinn, then and now, remember the “birds” around the Viru Hotel, selling their goods with a come-hither look. Finns have long come to Tallinn for cheap pleasures, alcoholic and carnal; most males in Estonia’s capital could probably refer a visitor to either a brothel or a place from which the next step could be taken. In a typically Estonian way, the debate around legalizing prostitution has been calm, and to this day Tallinn has no Reeperbahn or a red-light district. The debate however, means the issue is present, and not about to go away soon.

Russia has been trying to blame the AIDS problem on homosexual contact (a “Western” problem as politicos claim). Hard-line conservatives want a return to Soviet law, when homosexuality was illegal, brutally punished - with prison sentences common. Things are not that simply explained.

A recent report in “The Sunday Herald” (June 30th) say that female prostitutes are the driving engine of AIDS in Eastern Europe. The worst-hit cities lie on the drug routes from Afghanistan via Russia to the West: from Irkutsk to Kaliningrad, St.Petersburg and Moscow. The UK paper notes as well that Western intervention in Afghanistan has increased the problem. The Taliban had cracked down on poppy farming, but now opium and heroin drug routes are thriving anew. UNAIDS claims that the biggest problems faced in the entire region (including the Baltics in this sweeping generalization) are social attitudes, lack of education, and denial.

What would Bond do in the St. Petersburg of 2002, chancing, say, across Putin’s Pet, Miss Universe 2002 Oksana Fjodorova? Would he be unable to suppress the desire to charm the police (militia) lieutenant with a twinkle of those famous eyes? Russkaja krassavitsa - hmm, after all, Americans, through Hollywood, have set the standard at beauty pageants everywhere. Or would Bond do the sensible, cautious thing and visit the Hermitage instead, getting his fix of pulchritude from Titian instead... This is certainly not to imply that this year’s most bodacious beauty in a uniform is a carrier of HIV. But it seems, on all evidence, that mamushka Russia is doing more than her share of contributing to a growing global epidemic.

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