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Russia delays HIV testing for foreigners

Confusion reigned as the health ministry blamed the foreign affairs ministry for failing to have HIV test certificates ready for distribution along with application forms for visas. The foreign affairs ministry meanwhile complained that it was up to the health ministry to devise the mechanisms for testing and that its job was purely administrative.

While the Russian parliament insists that the law is now in place, in reality there will be a period of grace while the mess is sorted out, and the law is unlikely to be enforced until November at the earliest. Sceptics, however, doubt whether it will be ready even then.

Russian doctors and AIDS workers, who argue that the law will be ineffective in controlling the spread of AIDS as well as being in breach of international human rights, have predicted all along that its implementation would be chaotic. Are only Russian certificates to be valid, they ask; in which case, will doctors wait at border posts with needles, keeping visitors in quarantine until the results are known? Will visitors be allowed to be tested in their own countries--and if so, which certificates will be considered valid?

View larger version (160K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Vistitors to Russia could be forced to have an HIV test

Early drafts of the new law demanded that all visitors, even those coming to Russia for 24 hours, would have to be negative for HIV on testing before being granted a visa. The watered down version, signed by Boris Yeltsin last March, applies only to those coming to Russia for three months or longer.

Critics say that this distinction is "ludicrous" since those coming for three months or more do not pose a greater threat than, say, those who have sex with Moscow's prostitutes.

Furthermore, the law does not require Russians coming from abroad to be tested for HIV, said Dr Oleg Frolov of the AESOP AIDS awareness centre: "Of course there are many countries which have similar laws--among them the United States--but we would have liked Russia to be the first country not to have such a law."

The law itself is seen by many as a reflection of the antiforeigner attitude of an increasingly nationalist parliament. According to official Russian statistics, there are fewer than 1000 registered cases of HIV infection in Russia, most of which have been contracted through blood transfusions rather than sexual contact (the World Health Organisation puts the figures at least 10 times higher).

Russian statistics also claim that Russians are 188 times more likely to become infected with HIV by having sex with a foreigner than with a Russian. Sentiments like this are good vote catchers, which could explain why Boris Yeltsin signed the law despite vigorous opposition from Russian doctors, who would like to see the considerable funds that it will cost to test foreigners spent on domestic education, prevention, and cure.

Although the details still need to be clarified, the parliament insists that the law will not be revoked and that it will be enforced as soon as possible. In the meantime, without specific instructions from Moscow, Russian embassies around the world are making up their own rules. In London the embassy is insisting that all applications for visas are accompanied by a doctor's letter stating that an HIV test has been carried out. The Russian embassy in New York is warning that proof of negative results of an HIV test will be required at the border, and in Amsterdam embassy staff are insisting that HIV certificates are also stamped by the Dutch ministry of justice.--MIRANDA INGRAM, Moscow bureau chief, the European

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