The rapid spread of HIV in Eastern Europe underscores the true scale of social devastation following the reintroduction of capitalism into the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
An HIV epidemic is spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, particularly among children and adolescents. Unicef warned of these developments in a report published in mid-July. Nowhere else in the world is the rate of HIV infection climbing so rapidly as in this region.
A recent study in St. Petersburg found that among 300 street kids, 40 percent were HIV-positive. Similarly high rates were found in Odessa and Donetsk in Ukraine. A survey conducted by Unicef in Ukraine of 800 children and adolescents who spent half the day on the streets, showed that 57 percent of girls engaged at least occasionally in prostitution...
An employee of the Austrian foreign ministry, who acts as a regional doctor in Moscow, points to a direct correlation between the spread of the virus and the social crisis in the East. In a statement, Dr. Wolfgang Luster writes, "Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were low endemic regions for HIV..."With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a profound transformation took place in the structures in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union...." ...Throughout Eastern Europe, this social decline has now led to life expectancy shortening by seven years on average compared with 1989.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/aids-a10.shtmlyay, capitalism!!
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