You're reading: Global Fund, activists say Ukraine making progress in funding anti-AIDS programs

After years of delays, the Ukrainian government has finally started to provide more financing for treating people with HIV and tuberculosis, international donors and activists say.

The
representatives of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
visited Ukraine last week to discuss the progress made by the Ukrainian
government in taking over the financing of anti-AIDS and tuberculosis drug purchases. Most of
the present foreign-financed programs end in 2017.

So far,
these medicines have mostly been bought using funds from The Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a large international aid organization
that has donated around $500 million to Ukraine since 2004.

The Global
Fund provided four grants worth more than $140 million in 2016 to Ukrainian
non-government organizations, the Ukrainian State Disease State Control Agency
and the United Nations UNICEF program that delivers medicine to territories in
eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed armed groups have seized control from the
local authorities.

Ukraine has
long been supposed to fully take over the financing of HIV and tuberculosis
treatment programs. But for more than 12 years the country has failed to
allocate the required sum of money.

Matters
worsened with the unexpected Russian intervention and annexation of Crimea in
2014, as increased defense spending squeezed the budgets of health programs
even further.

The
Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, a large Ukrainian
non-government organization with more than 13,000 members, says that in 2016
Ukraine allocated only 40 percent of the amount needed to provide people who
live with HIV/AIDS with antiretroviral drugs and buy other medicines to treat
people suffering from tuberculous and hepatitis C.

Antiretroviral
drugs suppresses the HIV virus and stop its progression to full-blown AIDS.
People taking the therapy can no longer pass the virus to others and have a
greatly increased life expectancy.

However,
George Sakvarelidze, a manager of The Global Fund’s portfolio in Ukraine, said
in an interview with the Kyiv Post on Sept. 15 that he was more optimistic now
that a new team of reformers, led by Canadian doctor and director of
humanitarian initiatives at the Ukrainian World Congress Ulana Suprun, had been
given key positions in Ukraine’s Health Ministry in July.

On Sept.
15, parliament registered a draft of the 2017 budget that allocates Hr 5.9
billion ($236 million) to purchasing drugs to treat patients with HIV,
tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, cancer, hemophilia and other diseases. That’s Hr
2 billion ($80 million) more than in 2016.

However,
the draft budget still needs to be approved by the Ukrainian parliament.

The
non-government organizations and activists say that the breakthrough came after
two years of faltering reforms in the public health sector since the EuroMaidan
revolution.

“This is
the first (Health Ministry) team with which our discussions have had real-time
consequences,” the head of the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Dmytro
Sherembey, told the Kyiv Post.

Sherembey
said he also hopes that the Health Ministry will continue to buy medicines
through international organizations such as Crown Agents, a practice that was
introduced in 2015, which activists say saved around Hr 790 million (around $30
million) compared to the previous year, and use the savings to buy more
drugs.

Sakvarelidze said that if Ukraine shows willingness to take on more of the funding burden,
it would continue to receive money from the Global Fund. Sherembey added that
if Ukraine met its requirements, it would unlock an additional $120 million in
funds for medicine purchases from 2018 to 2021.

“Now all
the prerequisites make us hopeful that the government will be able to meet at
least the minimum of these requirements, and we will be able to continue
funding programs,” Sakvarelidze said.

Despite the
significant increase in financing, the budget provides barely the minimum
amount of funds needed by the programs in Ukraine fighting AIDS, hepatitis,
tuberculosis and hemophilia, according to data collected by the Patients of
Ukraine non-government organization.

“The treatment programs have to become the number-one priority for the government,”
Sherembey said.

“Almost
1,500 people a day die in Ukraine without drugs. This is an imperceptible
demolition (of the population), to which no one is paying any attention.”