By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) One reason the AIDS epidemic may be spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe and the exSoviet Union is that some producers of illicit drugs have been putting blood into drugs to test their quality, U.N. experts said Thursday.

The heroinlike products, which may contain blood infected with the lethal HIV virus, are injected by the unsuspecting user who becomes infected with HIV even if he uses a sterile needle.

Dr. Bernhard Schwartlaender, senior epidemiologist at the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS, and Dr. David Heymann, head of the emerging diseases division at the World Health Organization (WHO), expressed alarm over the new drug production method.

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