Ukraine is on the way to fulfill its obligations to provide funding for opioid substitution treatment!
Some days ago, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine finally approved their joint order “On Introducing Amendments to 2016 Budget Program Passport” N 1128/888, which for the first time stipulates allocation of budget funds (UAH 13 million) to procure methadone for 7,300 patients of opioid substitution treatment (OST), which is an evidence-based method of HIV/AIDS prevention and drug treatment in Ukraine.
We would like to remind that in accordance with the 2014-2018 National HIV/AIDS Program, this year 16.200 patients were supposed to receive OST, in particular with medications procured with budget funds, but due to the lack of state funding and strict regulation of controlled drugs the actual number of such patients today is only 8,900 people.
There were some unpleasant incidents during negotiation and approval of the new Budget Program Passport. Thus, in the list of criteria of the passport it is mentioned that the budget will cover OST only for “patients with HIV/AIDS”, though currently only 40% (3.3 thousand) patients who receive methadone comply with this criterion. We sincerely hope that the Ministry of Health will promptly correct this technical error and will not impose discriminative restrictions to limit access to OST for the remaining 4 thousand patients with no HIV-positive status.
On 28 October 2016, the Order of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine N 1011 dd. 29.09.2016 “On Approval of the Methodology to Calculate the Need in Substitution Maintenance Drugs for Patients with Mental and Behavioral Disorders Caused by the Use of Opioids” came into force, which will allow to calculate the real needs to procure OST with budget funds in future. This methodology is based on the recommendations and estimates used by Alliance for Public Health to procure methadone within the Global Fund-supported program.
It should be mentioned that the stock of OST drugs procured by Alliance with support of the Global Fund should be enough to cover the OST needs at least till the end of the first quarter 2017!
We would like to remind that on 22 August 2016 the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) sent an official letter to Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for Humanitarian Affairs, Pavlo Rozenko, emphasizing the real threat for Ukraine to lose non-repayable financial aid in the amount of USD 27 million (15% of the total amount of 134-million-dollar grant) in case of failure of the Government to comply with its previous obligations undertaken in 2015 to provide funding for the OST program. During further visits of the official delegation of the Global Fund to Ukraine, Government officials and representatives of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine confirmed their previous commitments!