The government approved a new draft program Thursday to fight AIDS, HIV, diabetes, tuberculosis and other diseases partly blamed for Russia’s steadily declining population, a spokeswoman said.


The new five-year plan, presented by Health Minister Mikhail Zurabov, aims to raise Russia’s life expectancy, which is among the lowest in the developed world. The program will cost $2.9 billion, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Zurabov as saying.

Russia’s population fell by more than 560,000 last year to 142.2 million, a new post-Soviet low, the state statistics agency said.

Life expectancy for Russian men in 2005 was 58.9 years, 15-20 years shorter than in the United States, France and Japan, a health-ministry official said.

For women, it was 72.3 years — four to seven years shorter than in the U.S., France and Japan.

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