If you have been around the world of Russian adoption for any amount of time, you have heard or read bleak assessments of what happens to the children who age out of its orphanages. Never having found a forever family in Russia or abroad, these young people often go out into the world ill-prepared for life on their own.

But last week, I was reminded in stark terms of the challenges they face. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health released a study that was conducted to learn how many of the street youth in St. Petersburg were... more

The English-language news channel Russia Today put up an interesting piece this morning on an orphanage in Moscow devoted to children with HIV and AIDS.

In case you are not familiar with Russia Today, it is an offshoot of the RIA-Novosti news agency. Like its parent organization, it covers breaking news, politics, business and human interest stories in Russia and other Eastern European and Central Asia countries. It also is taking full advantage of the Internet: It recently established its own channel on... more

Last week, I took a look at a new study about why alcoholism is killing Russian men. But Russia is also grappling with another big medical problem, and there's been a surprising amount of reporting on it in the last week: HIV.

The human immunodeficiency virus, as most people know, causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. The World Health Organization has estimated that more than 25 million people around the world have died of AIDS since it was identified... more