Russia’s
AIDS epidemic affects mostly young people

Health officials with the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS say Russia's AIDS epidemic is hitting young people disproportionately hard, with about 80% of the estimated 1.4 million HIV-positive Russians under age 30, the news agency RIA Novosti reports. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of Western Europe, where only about 30% of HIV cases are among those under age 30. The number of HIV cases in Russia has nearly doubled since 2001, with most of the cases occurring among young injection drug users and their sex partners. (The Advocate)