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Tajik migrant workers bring back money, gifts and AIDS from Russia
December 14, 2003
Dushanbe - With the approach of the holiday season, Tajiks working in Russia
are returning home bearing gifts, money and often sexually transmitted
diseases, including AIDS.
The problem has reached such proportions that an education campaign warning of
the danger has been running on television in this impoverished former Soviet
republic in Central Asia.
One spot features a father returning home from Russia with toys for the
children and a certificate attesting that he is HIV-negative for the wife. Each
night television runs ads for condoms.
The campaign is a measure of how big of a problem the issue has become --
Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim country where the topic of sexuality is
broached in public only rarely and then, with care.
"If sexually-transmitted diseases continue to spread at such a high rate, the
country will make a big leap in its AIDS cases," one doctor who requested
anonymity told AFP.
"The men who return home give syphilis and gonorrhoea to their wives. They
often don't work, don't realize the seriousness of these infectious diseases
and are content to treat themselves with home-made remedies," the doctor said.
Officially in this country of 6.3 million people just 119 are HIV-positive, but
experts estimate the real number may be 20 times this figure.
In January, the United Nations provided 2.4 million dollars (two million euros)
to help finance a government AIDS prevention program.
Tajkistan makes for a ripe AIDS breeding ground. It is the major smuggling
route for Afghan opium to Western markets, so drugs and prostitution are rife.
The country is impoverished and much of the population is spread out among its
mountains, so the level of education about sexually-transmitted diseases is
low.
The seasonal migration of an estimated million and a half workers to and from
Russia only amplifies the problem, experts say.
Tajikistan is among the poorest of former Soviet republics and many Tajiks earn
their living in wealthier Russia for most of the year.
"This migration is the only thing that enables us to prevent a large part of
the population from sinking into total poverty," Saodat Olimov, a specialist in
migration, told AFP.
Last year migrant workers brought back between 200 and 230 million dollars into
the country. The national budget for the year totalled 206 million dollars.
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