Official and Mother Assail Soviet Effort to Combat AIDS

MOSCOW — A health official said Monday that the government is “catastrophically deficient” in stopping the spread of AIDS, and an outraged mother called on the Soviet public to take over the prevention campaign against the deadly disease.

Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, published an appeal in which the Health Ministry’s AIDS prevention bureau asked other governmental departments and public organizations to donate foreign currency so that it can buy urgently needed disposable syringes and blood-transfusion systems from other countries.

But Yevgenia Albats, writing in the weekly Ogonok magazine, placed full blame for the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome on the government and called on Health Minister Yevgeny I. Chazov to resign.

Albats lashed out at the government’s failure to foresee the severity of the threat.

“Given the government’s demonstrated inability to protect our children from AIDS, the public must take the problem under its own control,” she said.

The government said the AIDS virus has infected 312 Soviet citizens. Deputy Health Minister Alexander I. Kondrusev said the AIDS virus has been documented in eight of the country’s 15 republics.