A DRUG awareness agency is trying to stamp out a lethal opium habit in the former Soviet Union.

Drug users gamble with their lives by injecting locally-produced opium which has deliberately been diluted with the blood of other addicts.

Now workers from Manchester agency Lifeline have embarked on an HIV prevention programme among Moscow and Siberia's growing numbers of intravenous drug users.

They have just concluded a three-year research programme and found near-epidemic levels of the virus.

Addicts inject a drug called hanka, made of low-grade opium straw and sold in ready-prepared syringes.

Because of the poor quality of the drug, it is mixed with blood, often that of the manufacturer, which chemically reacts with the solution making it injectable. Now cheap brown heroin is flooding the market, in prepared syringes.

And even though it doesn't require blood to thin it, Lifeline workers say the practice persists.

Lifeline director Mike Linnell said: '' We don't know how long the HIV virus can survive in blood outside of the body and boiling the blood would kill the virus. But this is a very grave area of concern.''

In addition, the Lifeline team discovered a chronic lack of education on HIV, widespread unsafe sex practices and prevalent prostitution.

It is estimated there are between 150,000 and 750,000 people infected with HIV in Russia.

Lifeline's international projects co-ordinator Colin Wisely said: ''The UN says there is still a window of opportunity to prevent the epidemic, but other more pessimistic observers say the window of opportunity is closing and, probably within the next two or three years, every injecting user who is going to be infected will be.''

''We are going to see epidemic curves hit and a period over the next decade where those infected become sick and die because Western medicines are too expensive to give them.''

Now Lifeline is preparing to send another team to the region in April to help develop an independent and comprehensive HIV prevention programme.

They plan to target users in five Siberian cities with cartoon-style harm-reduction literature.

Colin said: ''We want to address drug users in a language and culture they understand and which is non-patronising and non-judgmental.''

In the Siberian city of Irkusk, the team found the numbers of officially-recorded HIV infections among the 500,000 population soared from zero to 5,000 in a year.

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