You're reading: Patients of Ukraine’s main AIDS clinic at risk of losing medication

Some 1,800 HIV-positive patients could face interruptions of crucial antiretroviral treatment in a matter of weeks at Kyiv’s main AIDS clinic after the state failed to purchase the medication in time, say HIV-AIDS advocacy groups. 

Advocacy
groups say the country’s main AIDS clinic, located on the compound of the Kyiv
Pechersk Lavra Monastery, faces a looming medication shortage after government officials
failed in December to purchase the needed drugs for this year after abruptly
cancelling a tender for the medication procurement.

Officials
say there’s medicine left for two and a half months – enough to conduct another
tender and purchase the medicine – while advocates say there’s only enough
medicine to last for several weeks. The patients are too poor to buy their own
medications.

“I’m scared
that one day I would be told there is no medication for me at all,” Oleksiy
told the Kyiv Post, who is HIV positive, but wouldn’t give his surname for fear
of stigmatization.

Oleksiy
said he travelled to the clinic every three months from the northern city of
Sumy, but now travels every two weeks because of the limited supply of medicine
and smaller portions he receives.

Officials
now have called HIV-AIDS advocacy groups to come up with the money to make up
for the potential shortage in medication.

There may
be more than a whiff of scandal involved here. On Jan. 15, the state official
responsible for procurement of the drugs resigned abruptly and without
explanation. The official, Viktor Mariyevsky, was the head of the Gromashevsky Research
Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases.

The threat
to medication supplies could be life-threatening.

Even a day’s
interruption in antiretroviral treatment, so-called cocktail of drugs that
supports the immune system, puts a patient’s life with HIV at-risk since the entire
treatment plan needs to be altered. Antiretroviral therapy in Ukraine is free, with
more than 80 percent of treatment being covered by the state, and the rest by
foreign donors.

After a
plea for help, medication was sent to the AIDS clinic by the All-Ukrainian
Network of People Living with HIV and from the state reserve, but it remains
unclear how many drugs remain. 

In addition
to the procurement delay, activists want to know what happened to the Hr 13
million ($1.6 million) that was allocated from the state budget to purchase antiretroviral
pills.

Medical
officials say the money was used to buy medication for children, pregnant women,
patients with diabetes, heart disease, as well as other patients.

“The money
allocated for drugs will be spent only on drugs,” said Valery Zaporozhan, vice president
of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine.    

But critics
suspect embezzlement.

“I will
address the president and prosecutors to find out how this money could be spent
for other purposes,” said Volodymyr Zhovtiak, chairman of the All-Ukrainian
Network of Persons Living with HIV/AIDS.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]