Meetings in Samara

We did finally get to go to Samara yesterday. We had a pretty succesful trip. First, we went to the City AIDS Center. There we met with the Samara regional director and explained what we had learned in Chapaevsk. I mentioned the HIV positive pregnant girl that had been misinformed by them and questioned their counseling program. The director was not totally defensive, but definately misrepresented a lot of things that are happening in the region. I asked some questions about the AIDS treatment programs because I know that the pregnant girl was only getting the generic Russian version of AZT. He told us that they use the timizite to treat pregnant girls and it’s really just for PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission). Then he went on to show us all the expensive brand name pharmaceuticals that are available for ”free” on the tab of the government to treat patient who are experiencing symptoms of AIDS. That was not what we heard about the medications at all. We heard that they were beyond the price reach of any russian (7000$/year) and that you couldn’t get them for free. But according to the regional director there are 100 people getting free treatment. (I bet the whole $7000, that more than half of them have a connection with the director or his secretary). None of those people are from Chapaevsk. They are all from Tolliati or Samara, where there are 10,000 and 9500 HIV infectected people respectively. So we don’t have enough hiv infected people in Chapaevsk to qualify for any of the people from here to get treatment.
As far as networking though I think that it was a good meeting. I got the director’s email address and he invited me to come and do a behavioral change program research study at my earliest convenience  His big prevention thing is that awareness is good, but they are looking for the “secret” of successfully changing behaviors... I almost laughed at him when he said that...”Yes Mr director, you and every other public health specialist for the last 75 years.”
Afterwords we ate some bananas on the bus as we rode to the PSI (Population Services International) office. The first thing I noticed was how much space they have! Our office here is two small rooms for like 8 people and theirs was the whole floor of a podezd for like 12 people. Plus they have tons of brochures and cool stuff to hand out at their training meetings. They were doing a social marketing program with the "favorite" condoms for the last 4 years. But now that program is getting wrapped-up and they are moving on to a more anti-drug, abstinence, prevention education approach. Of course anyone who knows that PSI is a subset of USAID could deductively reason that our current administrations' views on things have of course effected the design of this new program for the next four years. I'm sad that the condom promotion program got closed before it made it out to Chapaevsk because they could really use that kind of program here.
After work I had a quick dinner and then ran to the pool with my host sister. I was teaching a swimming lesson to her and my co-worker Dima. They were both fast learners and it was rewarding to see them make such quick progress. We'll try to go again before I leave for moscow on friday night.