Press Release

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Radical Party, Moscow Office

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103051 Moscow, Russia

Tel./fax 7 095 9239127

E-mail n.khramov@agora.stm.it

For release 18:00

December 3, 1994

On the initiative of the Transnational Radical Party, a group of scientists from different countries, specializing on struggle against AIDS, directed the open letter to the members of Russian Federation Council. This letter calls upon not to adopt the AIDS Bill, passed by State Duma on November 11. Text of this open letter will be delivered to every member of the upper chamber of Russian parliament one Monday, one day before the opening of Federation Council session on December 6. The Aids Bill question is already laied down into agenda of session under item 8.

On Tuesday, December 6, at 9:30 near the Federation Council building (Boljshaja Dmitrovka, 26) Radical Party organizes demonstration against the total HIV testing for foreigners, provided by the Aids Bill. On the advertising page, published today in "Izvestia", Radical Party called upon the readers of the newspaper to participate in this demonstration, as well as to send faxes and telegrams to Mr. Vladimir Shumejko, chairman of Federation Council.

Below is the text of the open letter to the members of Federation Council and signatures under it.

OPEN LETTER TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION COUNCIL

As members of the international scientific community, we are greatly concerned about the AIDS Bill the State Duma adopted on November 11th, and more specifically, about art.9 which provides that HIV screening will be compulsory for all foreigners entering Russia.

This decision is in full contrast with the recommendations of the World Health Organization ( of which Russia is a Member State) and to the European Union directives. Furthermore, these measures are ineffective from the point of view of HIV prevention and are prejudicial to the rights of individuals.

On the contrary, financial resources, rather than being devoted to pointless and detrimental activities, should be allocated to those actions in the fields of prevention and care that have proven effective and should be expanded.

We sincerely hope the Russian Federation Council will reject the AIDS Bill as adopted by the Duma, thus avoiding the implementation of a measure expected to be detrimental to the control of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in Russia and in the rest of the world.

Dr.Daniel Tarantola, M.D.

Global AIDS Policy Coalition

Harvard School of Public Health

Scientific editor of "AIDS in the World"

Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA

François Xavier Bagnoud Fellow

in Health and Human Rights

Harvard School of Public Health

Dr.Giovanni Rezza

Director of COA - Centro Operativo AIDS

Istituto Superiore di Sanità

Roma

Dr.Giuseppe Ippolito

Director of CRA - Centro Riferimento AIDS

Ospedale Spallanzani

Roma

Prof. Carla Rossi

Professor of Mathematical Statistics

University of Rome - Tor Vergata

Member of the Editorial Advisory Committee

International Biometric Society

Alexandria (USA)