Blame & Banishment - Médecins du Monde

Blame and Banishment: The underground HIV epidemic affecting children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
In 2007, the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation reported that they were
monitoring 173,000 parents and guardians of minors identified as ‘at risk’ of abusing or
neglecting their children and 77,000 families were deprived of their parental rights. 38
Once on the streets, sex and drugs become part of these children’s daily reality and other
street dwellers compose their social network. Almost all street children report being
sexually active and the majority have multiple partners, both through sex among peers and
through selling sex.
A UNICEF and partners’ study among street children in Ukraine in 2009 showed
high levels of vulnerability to HIV. 39 A sample of over eight hundred 10- to
19-year-olds who spend over half their time on the streets were surveyed in four
cities. The findings show high rates of a range of HIV risk behaviours. Injecting
drugs was reported by 15.5 per cent of the sample and close to half had shared
equipment at least once in the past month. About 10 per cent of the boys reported
ever having had anal sex with a man or boy, and both boys (16.5 per cent) and
girls (56.7 per cent) reported having received payment or gifts in exchange for
sex. Rates of forced sex were also high, reported by 11.2 per cent of boys and
52.2 per cent of girls. Among sexually active girls, 18.3 per cent reported ever
having been pregnant and, among these, 68.2 per cent had obtained abortions.
For many street children, substance use, including glue sniffing, alcohol and self-made
drugs, is a ‘solution’ to their hardship, providing an easy means to escape the harsh daily
realities of hunger, poor living conditions, sexual violence and abuse, fear and loneliness.
In the words of Vladik, 11, living on the streets of Odessa, drug use transforms his reality:
“The world changes before your eyes. You look at a picture of an elephant and suddenly
you see that it smiles at you and splashes water all over you with its trunk. You can actually
feel your wet clothes…
”
But drugs also kill. One of the most affordable and dangerous substances used by many
street children in Moldova and Ukraine is a home-made amphetamine-like preparation,
called ‘baltoushka’, that is administered by injection several times per day. In addition to the
risk of HIV due to unsafe injection practices, its use is associated with abscesses and skin
burns at injection sites, partial loss of cognitive functions, brain damage and Parkinsonism.
Other effects include loss of appetite and the decreased feeling of hunger that so many
street children experience in the absence of regular meals. Other types of home-made,
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