On Sunday, May 15, Ukraine as well as countries all over the world marked the International AIDS Candlelight Memorial Day. According to the Ukrainian Center for Socially Dangerous Disease Control of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, 3,032 people died of AIDS in Ukraine in 2015, and 969 – in four months of 2016. Overall, since 1987 AIDS took the lives of 39,426 Ukrainians.
Traditionally, activists gathered at the Red Ribbon Memorial to express their concerns about the current situation in HIVtreatment within the initiative of the All-Ukrainian Network of PLWH. Alliance for Public Health joined the campaign, makinga focus on the urgent need to provide access to treatment for vulnerable populations. Andriy Klepikov, Executive Director of Alliance, pointed out that “unfortunately, though in the recent years we see that due to implementation of HIV prevention programs in vulnerable populations the number of new infections, in particular among people who inject drugs, has been considerably reduced, death rate among the members of this population remains almost unchanged – 45%. First of all, it is caused by the limited access to antiretroviral treatment. For example, an HIV-infected person who injects drugs has muchlower chances to received ART than an ordinary citizen who is in need of such treatment – the share of such patients among those who receive ART is only 12.5%.” According to the official data, as of April 1, 2016 there were 128,455 officially registered patients in Ukraine, with 63,029 (49%) of them receiving ART. Among the drug users, only 7,563 persons were receiving thetherapy as of the end of 2015.
One of the key causes of death among people living with HIV in Ukraine is tuberculosis and the situation with treatment of patients with HIV/TB co-infection remains critical. Only every other patient (56%) has an access to ART. One of the priorities of Alliance is treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis – since 2013, 9,936 patients received such treatment with financial support of the Global Fund. According to the data available, though the incidence of HIV-associated tuberculosishas remained almost unchanged in the recent years (14.5 cases per 100,000 people), the mortality related to co-infection goes down (2,522 cases in 2013 as compared to 1,994 cases in 2014), which is a proof of treatment success. However, thereare big concerns related to the fact that currently most patients rely on donor funding in the procurement of medical drugs – in future this should fall into the competence of the state.
Alliance for Public Health supports its partners’ initiative to appeal to the Prime Minister of Ukraine with a request to takeunder his personal control the question of full funding of the National Targeted Social Program for Countering HIV/AIDSand, in particular, public procurement of vital medicines (for ART, OST, TB treatment, etc.)
Alliance grieves for those who died and, in its turn, tries to do everything possible to finally break the sad death ratestatistics in Ukraine (currently Ukraine accounts for 25% of AIDS-related deaths in Eastern Europe and Central Asia) and to ensure the achievement of global UN targets in response to the epidemic.