"Society should understand that the HIV infected are our citizens, who can adapt to normal life in society. The first patient came to me in 1988. Now he is 20 years old. Finished a school and is a cabman. He is a normal citizen", Pokrovski added.

According to another round-table participant, Yevgeni Voronin,

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director of the republican childrens hospital in St.Petersburg, AIDS today is a social problem. Voronin said that his hospital has been providing treatment for people with HIV for 15 years. HIV children coming to us are not different from others. "They like it when the sun is shining and they can have a walk. And they hate rain", Voronin said.

There are now 40 children patients in the clinic. They all get full-fledged treatment, which axes the infection level to 3 to 5 percent. The methods and medicines have been tested in the West. "While 20 years ago a HIV case could live on during a year or a year and a half for lack of due treatment, today his immune system is restored by treatment and he actually lives as long as a healthy person", Voronin noted. And besides we know exactly how the AIDS is spread. "A child cannot infect you even by biting", Voronin noted.

Prejudices preventing social adaptation of HIV-infected children survive in society. "In most cases HIV children are put in special homes, but they have no AIDS specialists. The main motive for officials distributing HIV children abandoned by their parents is to isolate them from society", Voronin stressed.

He said that his hospital has studied approaches to the AIDS problem in ten high-incidence regions, such as the Kaliningrad, Sverdlovsk and Samara regions. In only the latter children abandoned by their parents were treated in the same way as healthy children of the same age. In other regions, officials tried to "seal them off" in closed homes, "forest park zones" not to be remembered", Voronin continued. "This is why they become pariahs", Voronin thinks.

This is why AIDS today is not so much a medical than a social problem, he believes. Taking the floor at the round table, Mikhail Shvydkoi, head of the Federal Culture Agency, also said that the problem of the HIV-infected children and adults is social and the way it is being handled is an indication of the moral health of society. Educational activities must be carried out here, he said in conclusion.

In the opinion of Shvydkoi, the initiative of the independent New Art-fund to hold on February 17, 2005 a charity auction in support of the HIV infected is crucial.

With support from the world-known Christies Auction House, the New Art-fund will sell works by modern Russian painters in Moscow.

"We want the tradition of charity auctions to become rooted in Russia. It is also our goal to change our citizens approach to the problem of social adaptation of the HIV-infected, especially children", said Alexander Rytov, director of the non-commercial New Art-fund.

Christies will help in selecting paintings and undertake organisation of bids. Receipts will go to buy medical equipment for the republican childrens hospital in Ust-Izhora near St.Petersburg, where HIV-infected children are getting medical treatment.

MOSCOW, November 25 (RIA Novostis Ksenia Korenchuk)