Straight AIDS Threatens Europe

4 million Russians are expected to have AIDS by 2007 threatening an epidemic for heterosexuals across Europe, the Observer warned this week. Exponential annual infection rates since 1999 mean most infected Russians show no symptoms, the paper suggested, with sex workers threatening to export the disease abroad.

"The first wave of people will start arriving in hospitals in three years time, now there is no visible problem," said Urban Weber a United Nations AIDs expert.

"Germany should be highly aware of the potential for a problem. The economic decline in Eastern Europe sends sex workers to border areas and westwards."

The UN warning came as a report in the British Medical Journal predicted that HIV infection rates are set to rise from 30,000 to 39,000 people in Britain by the end of 2,003, with the trend strongly upwards. Furthermore, "while infection fro homosexual sex or shared needles is down over the past decade, heterosexual cases are up 48%."

http://www.avert.org (AIDS Education and Research Trust)
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