Pregnant women and mothers who have tested positive for HIV face discrimination in Russia, and their children are often segregated for no medical reason, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued Friday, AP reported. Russia has some 300,000 HIV-positive people according to government data, but Russian and foreign experts say the true number is closer to 1 million. A recent study by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington estimated the number of AIDS deaths in Russia at 13,000, against the official figure of 4,800. According to official data, more than 9,500 HIV-positive women gave birth by February 2005, and 10 percent to 20 percent of them abandoned their babies, the rights group said. Many of those children end up in segregated orphanages for HIV-positive children or hospital wards because fear of contact with them is so widespread. The report quoted Viktor Kreidich, the chief doctor of a Moscow orphanage for HIV-positive children, as saying the segregation was necessary «not because these children are dangerous for society, but we are dangerous for them. ... Keeping them all together is one way of protecting them from ... society.» --mor 1037 Local Time 0737 GMT
