A GROWING EPIDEMIC'S TINIEST VICTIMS

HIV Babies Become The Latest Chapter In The Tragedy That Is Drug Abuse In
Today's Russia.

IRKUTSK, Russia - When the special infants' ward in the Infectious Disease
Hospital in Irkutsk opened two years ago, the first arrival was tiny Vanya,
who had been abandoned by his mother 12 hours after being born.

Next was a desperately underweight child whom the nurses called Dima.

Then came Vladislav, newborn son of a 15-year-old heroin addict.

Now, the roster numbers 18 children between 4 months and 2 years old who
share two traits: having been born infected with HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS, and having been abandoned by a drug-addicted mother.

To Sister Mary Catherine Malmros, a Roman Catholic missionary from Texas
who volunteers at the hospital, they are "little innocents" whose lives
were star-crossed before they began.

"I pray, of course, that they will all be healthy," Sister Mary Catherine
said recently as she held Vanya, now 2, on her shoulder. "I pray that they
will be adopted and . . . that they will be loved."

HIV babies, as they are often called here, are part of the tragedy of
Russia's growing drug problem, which has helped fuel the spread of the
infection, largely through the sharing of hypodermic needles.

Irkutsk, a city of 600,000 in southern Siberia, is a hot spot for
drug-trafficking rings from Mongolia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Health
officials estimate there to be 14,000 addicts in the city, many of them
barely in their teens.

As of this month, Irkutsk has recorded 8,961 HIV cases - more than 10
percent of the 86,259 cases recorded nationwide and one of the highest
rates in Russia.

But Alexei Zerov, who heads the city's drug-prevention effort, calls the
statistics "the tip of the iceberg" and says the real figures could be 10
times higher.

The infants' ward was opened in 1999 with the realization that newborns
were fast becoming the latest victims of Russia's HIV crisis, said Dr.
Alexandra Denyak, 63, who oversees the children.

"We had a very big flash of drug addictions, and these children started
appearing," she said. "Children were born from mothers who had been heroin
addicts for years and had used infected needles."

Vladislav's mother, who left him immediately after his birth, was killed in
a drug deal. Nikita's mother is thought to be in prison. The mothers of
several other children have disappeared.

"A child is a very unwanted burden for a drug addict," said Alexei, 26, a
recovering addict who serves as a consultant at a drug-rehabilitation
center in Irkutsk.

HIV was first recorded in Russia in 1987. It developed into a "real
epidemic" in the mid-1990s as drug addiction spread, according to Arkadiusz
Majszik, who tracks the AIDS crisis in Russia for the United Nations. The
number of HIV cases there has at least doubled every year since 1996.

Reliable statistics are elusive, but health officials estimate that several
hundred abandoned babies stricken with the virus are hospitalized in
Russia. And those officials fear that the number will increase sharply.

In St. Petersburg, across the country from Irkutsk, 30 abandoned children
crowd a ward at the Republican Hospital of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Yevgeny
Voronin, the hospital's director, estimates that 20 percent of
drug-addicted mothers abandon their babies.

Denyak said junior nurses at the Irkutsk hospital had initially refused to
handle the HIV-positive babies, but now the ward seems little different
from a pediatric floor in an American hospital, as nurses and doctors
coddle each child, watching for the slightest change in condition.

The patients wear print-flowered gowns and occupy small cribs. Their names
and birthdays are written on the wall above their beds.

"We treat them as ordinary children," Denyak said. "We give them treatment.
We give them the warmth of our hearts. We cannot give these children
anything but kindness."

None has full-blown AIDS, but Denyak fears that Vanya and another are close
to developing the disease. During his first six months in the hospital,
Vanya seemed to be making progress, but he has since regressed. He is often
aggressive, never smiles, and has lost weight.

As she held Dima, a brown-haired 2-year-old with enormous brown eyes,
Denyak said her goal was to find homes for the children.

"They could be anything," she said, "a doctor, a driver, a seamstress. They
should not stay in the hospital. They should go to families, where they
could be given loving care." But, she added, "to our terrible regret, they
will stay here."