AIDS worker questions figures and treatment being offered

Bucharest has an estimated 30,000 heroin users, yet official figures suggest that only four drug abusers in all of Romania have the AIDS virus, HIV. This is just one of the statistics questioned by the head of a Romanian group battling the spread of the disease.

Ms Catalina Elena Iliuta, project co-ordinator of the Romanian Association Against AIDS, also questions claims about universal availability of HIV treatment made yesterday at a ministerial meeting by the country's prime minister, Mr Adrian Nastase.

Ms Iliuta (24) is in charge of the harm reduction programme run by the association in Bucharest. Her role in developing prevention programmes for the general public and at-risk groups gives her an indepth view of the HIV problem in Romania.

"HIV doesn't mean only treatment and testing, it is also related to prevention but also to having access to services," she said. This includes ready access to clean syringes for the drug using population, to condoms, to counselling for women in the sex trade and also supports for homeless minors living on the streets.

"These things are missing from our country," Ms Iliuta said. "We still have problems and we must face it." Mr Nastase detailed Romania's first response to a looming AIDS threat that arrived in the form of its own children. Large numbers became infected with HIV while in institutions including orphanages and after receiving infected blood products. The government's response was to introduce "universal access to treatment" for all HIV infected patients, he said.

Ms Iliuta disputed his claims however. While things have improved greatly with good treatment availability for children and their families, universal access is not available. "People who are current drug users do not get the treatment," she said, although those who have ended their drug use can apply for drug therapy.

Official figures suggest that Romania has 14,000 confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS, she said, adding: "That is not a real number." Her own estimate is five or six times this number, this in a population of about 22 million.

People are reluctant to put themselves forward for testing given the stigma attached to being HIV positive, and "people are not going to do a test on their own", she said. "You will not find someone from a village or the mountains having a test yet unsafe sex and other risky behaviours are happening."

The drug abusing population is the group currently giving most cause for concern. "They are a hard to reach community," she said. And despite the fact that up to 60 per cent of abusers are known to be positive to hepatitis C, only four are known to be HIV positive. "I want this to be true but I don't know," she said.