In 2011, IMR launched an initiative to raise awareness of the disastrous state of affairs regarding HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Russia. Russia has become a world leader in TB and currently, following India and China, has the largest number of multidrug-resistant TB cases. In most first-world nations, HIV/AIDS and TB have been taken under state control, have ceased to be taboo subjects, and have been destigmatized. This is not the case in Russia or the former Soviet republics, where independent observers report that the incidences of TB and HIV/AIDS have reached epidemic levels. But despite these grim figures, the authorities have not only ignored this problem but are actively suppressing information surrounding it. People are largely unaware that a significant proportion of Russians are TB carriers.
In the face of scarce information about the epidemic, New York–based photographer Misha Friedman has presented IMR with a valuable resource: a series of photographs taken beginning in 2008 that document the lives and inadequate treatment of HIV/AIDS and TB patients in the Caucasus, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. In the autumn of 2011, with IMR’s support, Friedman expanded his project, visiting and photographing TB hospitals in St. Petersburg and Togliatti, Russia.
Over the course of 2012, IMR sponsored a series of exhibitions in the United States, the European Union, and Russia to showcase Friedman’s works and draw public attention to this acute social problem.
