More than 60 percent of people with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia acquired the virus through injection drug use, Russia's chief medical official said Wednesday. However, Russia will not be embracing methadone maintenance treatment for injection drug users (IDUs), Gennady Onishchenko told the Eastern Europe and Central Asia AIDS Conference in Moscow. More than 500,000 people are officially listed as HIV-positive in Russia.

"The danger is that the epidemic will cross over from a concentrated one to a general one," Onishchenko said. Russia offers IDUs effective programs other than methadone maintenance, he said. "Russia speaks out categorically against this component in prevention programs," he said, noting that the synthetic drug is illegal in the country. "We aren't simply denying this problem, we are proposing our solution," he added.

At the conference, international speakers criticized Russia's policy against methadone, which is given to IDUs to help them cease drug injection. The International AIDS Society and the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network released a statement urging Russia to support methadone programs.

Such interventions are "an essential element of universal access to HIV prevention," said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS. "I fear that in this region the legal barrier to harm-reduction programs also makes [IDUs] a target for harassment, driving the people most affected by this epidemic underground," he said. "I urge each country in this region to define within its own legislation the harm-reduction program it needs, just like China has done with great success."