Russia: Educating youth about drugs and lifestyle choices
“It is a sad fact in Russia that men, in particular, go to an early grave. On average a Russian man is lucky to make it to 60. In the frozen heart of Siberia they die even younger - around 57. Alcohol is by far the biggest killer. More than half a million Russians drink themselves to death every year.
But since the early 2000s, another killer has been spreading at frightening speed across Russia. Actually there are two of them, one closely stalking the other. The first is heroin. The second is HIV. In the US, there are around 800,000 heroin addicts. In the UK, between 200,000 and 300,000. In Russia, there are now two and a half million.†BBC Report, April 2010
Russia now has the dubious distinction of being the country with the fastest growing HIV infection rate in the world.
A team of twelve (many of whom are also former drug users) go into schools, colleges and drug rehabilitation centres to educate and warn young people about the dangers of drug addiction and HIV.