Epidemic syphilis in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union.

Major syphilis epidemics are occurring in the former Soviet Union as a result of the effects of rapid political, economic and social reform on clinical services and sexual behaviour. Together with epidemics of injecting drug use-associated HIV infection, they pose a major threat of large sexually transmitted HIV epidemics. Economic realism demands that control efforts address the market and ideological forces driving the development of interventions, as well as technical aspects of their design.