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| Lithuania Unsettled By High Number of HIV Cases Among Inmates |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 08/27/2002 |
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Aleksandras Kreslinas landed a 10-year sentence for armed robbery but fears it may amount to a death penalty since he became infected with HIV while in Lithuania's Alytus prison. He was among 263 inmates at the prison who have tested positive for HIV during random checks recently by the state-run AIDS Center, findings that nearly doubled the official number of HIV cases for all of this former Soviet Baltic republic of 3.5 million people. The results not only traumatized the prisoners, they frightened the nation. The real worry is that the results may indicate HIV is far more prevalent in the country than imagined, said Irina Savtchenko, an adviser to the United Nations agency devoted to fighting AIDS. Tests at Lithuania's other 14 prisons found only 18 cases, the AIDS Center said. Before the tests, Lithuanian officials had listed just 300 HIV cases, or less than 0.1 percent of the population, the lowest rate in Europe. Savtchenko said official statistics don't always reflect the full scale of a country's AIDS problem since many virus carriers are never tested. 'Usually, HIV epidemics are underground. The epidemic's not seen until the prevalence in the region becomes very high,' she said. This predominantly Roman Catholic nation won praise after regaining independence in 1991 for quickly setting up condom distribution programs and supplying free needles to drug addicts to stop the most common forms of spreading the AIDS virus. But the outbreak at Alytus, which the AIDS Center blamed on intravenous drug use and shared needles, is seen as a major public health failure. Several prison officials have been fired, including the warden. Many people called for Justice Minister Vytautas Markevicius to resign, though he managed to keep his post. |
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