Russian President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledges his country has failed to make progress in fighting its illegal drug epidemic, Reuters reports. The World Health Organization says heroin use has fueled Russia’s HIVAIDS epidemic, one of the fastest growing in the world. Russia has the world’s third largest rate of heroin use and accounts for a third of all heroin deaths worldwide. The International AIDS Society has warned that the number of new HIV cases in Russia is likely to grow between 5 percent to 10 percent a year unless the government takes new measures.

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