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OFFICERS WHO HAVE CONTRACTED AIDS WILL NOT BE DISMISSED

RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, March 11. (RIA Novosti) - The officers who have contracted AIDS will not be dismissed, lieutenant-general Igor Bykov, chief of the Main Military Medical Directorate of the Russian defense ministry, told a press conference.

"This is universal practice, we cannot reject it because this a career officer," he said.

In his words, in military hospital and outpatient clinics, there is a set of special medicines for HIV positive people and those who have contracted AIDS which make it possible to extend servicemen's life by 25-30 years and do not influence capacity for work.

General Bykov refused to cite the number of the servicemen who have contracted AIDS.

"I do not want to name the exact number but there are not very many of them," he said.'

The number of AIDS cases among servicemen has decreased in the past three years, he said.

In his words, about six million Russian citizens (servicemen, veterans of military service, their families and some other categories of citizens) have the right to receive medical assistance in military medical institutions.

The system of military medicine includes 208 military hospitals, 152 outpatient clinics, 47 sanatoria and rest homes, 63 institutions of state sanitary-epidemiological surveillance, 44 medical supply institutions, 5 higher schools with a clinical base, and other establishments.