AIDS in Ukraine. Lobbying for life

A country that is tackling AIDS with at least some seriousness

IT IS a long hike up to the 19th-floor office of the All-Ukraine Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. In a spectacular example of cutting its nose off to spite its face, the residents of the building have stopped the lift going above the eighth floor, in an effort to force the activists out. Yet despite such inconveniences, the organisation is abuzz with energy. And with good reason. Russians tend to sneer at Ukrainians as poor, backward cousins; but unlike Russia, where AIDS risks being overlooked, Ukraine is taking the threat seriously.

Part of the reason, says Hannah Khodas, the network's programme manager, is that Ukraine is smaller: no similar group in Russia has offices in half the country's regions. And because Russia's bigger cities have the money to buy antiretroviral drugs for everyone who needs them, there has been less of a direct motive for civil activism. But another big factor is support from the top. President Leonid Kuchma's glamorous daughter, Olena Franchuk, runs an AIDS charity. Top stars have been persuaded to pose with HIV-positive friends for advertising campaigns. Before Russia could even get its act together to apply, Ukraine had won a grant from the Global Fund.

Less gloriously, Ukraine was also the first country to have its grant suspended, after the agencies in charge of spending it - among them the local office of the UN Development Programme - took too long to get going. Things have improved since a foreign organisation, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, was put in charge. But there are still problems: on three occasions, private donors have had to fly in with suitcases and boxes full of drugs because the health ministry has not bought medicines in time. Only 137 people are on treatment, as against the 2,000 who need it. But that target is several times higher than originally planned, thanks partly to lobbying by activists. Their Russian counterparts can only dream of having that much influence over their government.

• Primary Source

http://www.theglobalfund.org/search/portfolio.aspx?lang=en&countryID=UKR http://www.theglobalfund.org/search/portfolio.aspx?lang=en&countryID=UKR

http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/ http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/

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