Russia is home to one of the largest and fastest-spreading AIDS epidemics on the planet. This piece draws attention to the lesser-known facts about the crisis, and brings them to light with text and intimate video interviews with the people suffering the consequences. Among them: a mother living AIDS and her HIV-positive son; a former heroin dealer living with AIDS; an ex-inmate who became HIV-positive in prison. The reporting reveals how high risk groups – intravenous drug users, sex workers, prisoners, and gay men – form a pariah class in Russia whom politicians and the general public have little desire to assist. This manifests in public health policies that run openly reject the international community’s protocols for AIDS prevention: providing opiate substitution therapy for opiate addicts, offering even basic education about preventing the spread of HIV, failing to test or adequately treat its massive prison population, threatening NGO health workers with the label “foreign agent” if they work with even the most innocuous public health organizations, such as the World Health Organization. The overall sentiment from Russian officials about this ongoing catastrophe is, as the title indicates, indifference.
