Russian Soldiers To Receive Condoms Before Leave

Soldiers from the Russian Army will now receive condoms together with their leave-passes.
Head of the Defense Ministry’s medical directorate, Lieutenant General Igor Bykov, was quoted by the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper as saying the Russian Army would use the preventive measures against AIDS “taken all over the world.”
He said that over 2,000 HIV-infected people had been detected in the Russian Armed Forces since 1989. This number equals 0.7 percent of all cases in Russia, he said.
Bykov added that although the system of anti-AIDS measures in the Russian Army was not fully formed, “it worked rather effectively.”
Most of the HIV-infected personnel in the Russian Army are conscripts who are withdrawn from the armed forces as soon as the infection is discovered, he said. “However, according to the law, we have no right to test all conscripts, only those on contract undergo an obligatory AIDS test.”
from MosNews.com