kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — About 200 HIV-positive people and AIDS activists are holding a protest outside Ukraine's Cabinet building against a recent decision to close a clinic that treats the country's most seriously ill AIDS patients.
Ukraine’s growing HIV/AIDS epidemic is considered Europe’s most serious.
The clinic is on the grounds of the renowned Pecherskaya monastery in Kyiv. The Cabinet resolution calls for removing all facilities from monastery grounds whose activity is not related to the monastery’s religious activities or museums.
There have been more than 167,000 HIV infections registered in Ukraine since 1987 and nearly 19,000 AIDS-related deaths recorded. But those figures are widely regarded as underreporting the extent of the epidemic.
