Indifference fires up Ukraine's AIDS activists (Feature)

By Andrew Yurkovsky Jul 22, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Vienna - The last thing one might expect in a country with Europe's highest rate of HIV infection is the closure of its premier facility devoted to treating the deadly virus.

But that is exactly what activists say authorities are planning to do in Ukraine, where the prevalence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is some 1.6 per cent of the adult population.

It is just one of the many challenges facing activists in this former Soviet republic who advocate for the rights and treatment of people with HIV.

There's no sign that these activists are giving up, though.

One of them is Volodymyr Zhovtyak, the head of the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV, an organization started 10 years ago, when there was almost no testing for HIV in Ukraine and no regular treatment.

Zhovtyak gave a rousing speech earlier this week at the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

He invoked the artistic achievements of Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz and the pioneering flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

The threat of HIV, he suggested, could inspire equal greatness from people in a region where HIV is spreading more rapidly than anywhere else in the world.

'We are very different,' he said. 'Our region is so big that when we visit our colleagues, we travel from the Catholic cathedrals of Lithuania to the mosques of Uzbekistan ... We live in different countries, but we have a common history - common tragedies and common achievements.'

The Network, which in 2006 won a United Nations Red Ribbon Award for its achievements in combating discrimination, has served as an example to others setting up similar organizations in the former Soviet Union.

Today, according to the Network, some 16,000 people in Ukraine get antiretroviral therapy, the standard treatment for AIDS, but there are almost as many who need such care and don't get it.

In a country where nearly half a million people are estimated to be infected with HIV, the demand for medication is expected to grow.

And yet it's at such a time that authorities have said they want to close down the country's best clinic for HIV treatment, in the capital Kiev.

Activists say the facility, next to a famous Orthodox monastery, is to be converted into a hotel and the patients are to be moved to a new facility away from the city centre.

Authorities say patients can remain at the clinic until a new one is ready. Their aim, they say, is to improve treatment of those with HIV.

But Zhovtyak and others from his organization say they doubt this will be the case.

They charge that previous Ukrainian governments have frittered away millions of dollars intended for the treatment and care of AIDS patients. They expect no different from the new administration that came into power earlier this year with the election of President Viktor Yanukovych.

'Of course they make an insincere promise they're going to build a new clinic,' Dmytro Sherembey, a spokesman for the Network, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'When they can't buy the necessary medication for people, any talk about building a new clinic is a lie. It's not true. There won't be a clinic,' he said.

Sherembey accused Ukraine's political leadership of being grossly negligent, given the scale of HIV infection in his country.

The UN estimates that some 440,000 people were infected with HIV as of the end of 2007. The Network says that number would reach 800,000 by 2015 if the rate of infection continues to increase at the current level.

Despite these alarming figures, Sherembey charged, corrupt officials in successive governments have siphoned off as much as 60 per cent of budgeted funding for treatment and care of people living with HIV. The government allegedly buys the same medication for 30 times what his organization pays.

The experience with AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, where some 22.4 million people were infected with HIV in 2008, should serve as a warning call to Ukraine's leaders, but they remain unmoved, Sheremebey said.

'We believe that the shortsightedness of policy and the lack of strategic understanding of the epidemic's consequences will lead us in 2015 or 2016 to the point at which that there won't be any turning back,' he said.