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MOSCOW -- The Soviet Union has deported about 30 foreigners who underwent treatment for the deadly AIDS virus and plans to expel six more, a leading health official said Wednesday.
Alexander Pokrovsky, director of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, told the official Tass news agency the Soviet Union is embarking on a major AIDS information and prevention campaign.
He also confirmed to the Tass that three foreigners have died from acquired immune deficiency syndrome in the last two years. The Ogonyok magazine earlier this week reported the three AIDS deaths -- the first reported from the killer virus in the Soviet Union.
Pokrovsky told Tass that one victim was brought to the Soviet Union for treatment and died a day after being diagnosed, and the other two were foreign students whose 'disease progressed so rapidly it was impossible to help them.'
Pokrovsky said more than 800 people have undergone AIDS testing at a special anonymous clinic in Moscow but only one was tested positive.
'Seven AIDS patients are in the hospital at present,' Pokrovsky said. 'One is a Soviet national, the rest are foreigners.'
'About 30 foreigners who underwent treatment here have already been deported. Six patients, on completing the course of treatment, will also return home.'
Soviet health officials have announced a campaign against the disease, which destroys the body's immune systems, leaving it prey to cancers and other fatal infections.
Pokrovsky told Ogonyok that 10 million copies of a pamphlet on AIDS will be distributed to reach 'every enterprise, school and home.'
'Sometimes a conversation reveals that people haven't the foggiest idea of the disease or its symptoms,' Pokrovksy told Tass. 'That is why we are engaged in a large-scale campaign of information and prevention.'
The preventive measures, he said, include checks of blood donors to detect the disease, which is spread by intimate sexual contact, blood transfusions and the sharing of needles by drug abusers.
'AIDS tests are currently being carried out among blood donors and high-risk groups,' Pokrovsky said. 'Fifty thousand people have undergone tests in Moscow. They read no trace of the virus.'