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St. Petersburg/New Haven Partnership for HIV/AIDS Care, Treatment, and Support Launched

Dr. Krystn Wagner, left, and Dr. Robert Heimer, center, who will oversee the St. Petersburg /New Haven Partnership for HIV/AIDS Care, Treatment, and Support announce the launching of the partnership at City Hall with Mayor John DeStefano, Jr.

The St. Petersburg/New Haven Partnership for HIV/AIDS Care, Treatment, and Support (the “Partnership”) was launched on September 20, 2004 at New Haven City Hall. In his opening remarks, New Haven Mayor The Honorable John DeStefano, Jr. said, “I can't think of a better reason for two cities to come together… than caring for other people.” In introducing the Partnership, Kim Blankenship, Associate Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) and Associate Research Scientist at EPH, noted the importance of the Partnership given the increasing rate of HIV infection and the increasing number of AIDS cases in Russia.

The Partnership is funded by a two and a half year grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has contracted with the American International Health Alliance (AIHA). One of five areas in Russia chosen to participate in AIHA's HIV/AIDS care and treatment program, the St. Petersburg Partnership will be implemented by a collaborative effort between CIRA, the Yale AIDS Program, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, various community based organizations and non-governmental organizations throughout Connecticut, and the St. Petersburg AIDS Control Center, the St. Petersburg Health Committee and various St. Petersburg health and social care institutions.

Robert Heimer, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at EPH and Krystn Wagner, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Medical Director of the Nathan Smith Clinic, who will oversee the Partnership, stressed that while the HIV epidemic was introduced into Russia late, the country now has one of the fastest growing rates of HIV in the world and that HIV/AIDS prevalence is seriously underestimated there.

The majority of HIV positive Russians became infected through injection drug use. This presents a particular challenge because many Russian healthcare professionals are reluctant to treat injection drug users. Additional challenges to confronting Russia's HIV/AIDS epidemic include that many people do not know their HIV status and only 1,800 Russians are currently receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy despite the fact that the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimate that 71,000 Russians will need it by 2005.

The Partnership's goals include training Russian healthcare professionals in HIV/AIDS clinical management, developing the HIV/AIDS healthcare system, shaping attitudes and policies relating to substance abuse, decreasing the stigmatization of and discrimination against individuals with HIV and histories of injection drug use, and emphasizing the value of integrating HIV care and prevention. In furtherance of its goals, the Partnership will sponsor approximately four exchange visits a year, with teams of U.S. participants traveling to St. Petersburg to train their Russian colleagues and teams of Russian participants coming to New Haven for training. The exchanges will begin with the arrival of a Russian team in New Haven on October 3rd.

-Story by Christy Gordon