Russia’s current abstinence-based HIV outreach and prevention ignores the spread of the virus among drug users and other high-risk groups, according to AIDS advocates meeting in Moscow this week as reported by The Associated Press.

Global AIDS officials are advising Russia to use methadone treatment and harm reduction strategies to reduce HIV transmission among drugs users, sex workers and men who have sex with men, which might curb the disease from moving into the general population.

While Russia’s chief public health officer Gennady Onischenko said the country is “emphatically against” drug replacement therapy to treat addiction, UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibé affirmed that it has proven effective elsewhere.