Russian sites call HIV a myth, Western conspiracy—an epidemic is now exploding

An explosive epidemic of HIV/AIDs has gripped Russia in recent years, partly with the strength of anti-Western conspiracy theories online that promote the idea that the virus is simply a myth.

Further Reading Fighting on after the war is over, HIV contrarian publishes yet another paper Online groups, forums, and chat rooms have repeatedly sprouted up to spew denialism of HIV and AIDS recently—often with thousands of members—according to a new report by the AFP. One group dubbed the virus “the greatest myth of the 20th century,” while calling HIV drugs “poison” and doctors “killers” working to enrich pharmaceutical companies. They coached believers on how to deny treatment. Others claimed the "myth" of AIDS is intended to establish “total control” over the world population.

Meanwhile, Russia has seen steep and consistent increases in rate of new HIV cases in the past decade, even as the rest of the world has seen declines. Since 2006, the rate of new cases in Russia has increased by at least 149 percent and has been steadily increasing by 10 to 15 percent each year. There are now more than 900,000 Russians living with HIV, with 10 new cases reported each hour. About 80 people die from AIDS-related issues each day.

According to the AFP, less than half of Russians with HIV are currently being treated for the infection. While it’s unclear what percentage of that is driven by the dangerous messages on the internet and elsewhere, a string of recent child deaths has enraged health experts and doctors there.

“It's unacceptable in our day and age that children are dying while a range of treatment is available," Alexey Yakovlev, a leading doctor at Botkin hospital in Saint-Petersburg, told the AFP. In August, a 10-year-old girl died at the hospital after her religious family repeatedly refused to treat her.

Two weeks ago, a regional court in Perm, western Siberia, sentenced a mother to 18 months of house arrest for ignoring her doctors’ pleas and withholding treatment for her son, who died at eight-years-old, according to The Independent.

The house arrest was the first punishment of its kind there, but it didn’t comfort health experts.

“What is 18-month home arrest in any case?” Kirill Vorobyev, an infectious diseases doctor told The Independent. “That is a very lenient sentence for murder.”

Meanwhile, there is another ongoing trial in the Siberian city of Tyumen over the death of a two-year-old girl, who was denied treatment by her HIV-denialist parents.

Further Reading A typo skewed the history of HIV in the US and vilified “Patient Zero” Part of the reason that the HIV-myth has caught on in Russia is due to “Russians' love of conspiracy theories,” Yelena Dolzhenko—who works at Moscow-based AIDS prevention center, the SPID.Tsentr foundation—told the AFP. Dolzhenko said that anti-Western rhetoric ratcheting up on television and online has also contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories. HIV continues to be cast as a disease of “druggies” and “American gays,” she added, despite the fact that half of new cases are from heterosexual contact.

Russia’s underfunded health system, drug shortages, and strict “family value”-based health campaigns aren’t helping, she and others noted.

Yekaterina Zinger, director of the Svecha foundation in Saint-Petersburg, blamed the lack of resources for doctors to consult with and properly inform infected patients. “People don't get enough information and begin to think that somebody is hiding something from them,” Zinger said.

Dolzhenko said that official campaigns from the Russian government promote protection through being “intimate only with the person you trust,” rather than condoms. Yet 30 percent of infected Russian women get the virus from their sole partners, she said.