Russia’s chief sanitary official, Gennady Onishchenko, has called for labor migrants from Tajikistan to be temporarily barred from Russia for public health reasons.
Speaking to Ekho Moskvy radio on Monday, Onishchenko said 188 Tajik who entered Russia last year were infected with HIV, tuberculosis or syphilis.
“This is a burden on Russia’s not-very-big public health budget,” he said, adding he will ask the government to consider introducing a temporary travel ban against migrants from the impoverished Central Asian republic.
Tajiks account for a fifth of foreign nationals expelled from Russia for medical reasons this year, Onishchenko added.
Russia has around 600,000 HIV-positive people, according to government data. It also has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis in the world.
