EDITORIAL: Ukraine's HIV/AIDS epidemic (12/11/05)

EDITORIAL

Ukraine's HIV/AIDS epidemic

Ukraine got a much-needed boost in the fight against HIV and AIDS when former U.S. President Bill Clinton, in a visit to Kyiv on November 27, pledged his foundation would help the cause.

Mr. Clinton, who landed in Kyiv on the eve of World AIDS Day, commemorated around the world on December 1, met with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. He told the Ukrainian president that his aid group, the Clinton Foundation, would provide training for medical professionals and help Ukrainians get access to HIV medications at discounted prices.

Currently, there are 40.3 million people who live with HIV and AIDS throughout the world - 38 million adults, 17.5 million women and 2.3 million children under the age of 15, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, also called UNAIDS.

While there has been progress in the fight, health care workers have had to battle against growing complacency. Doctors in the United States and Canada are now able to halt or delay the damage caused by HIV through various tests and treatments using anti-HIV drugs, but the problem nonetheless persists. In fact, in countries where most HIV and AIDS patients do not have access to this kind of medicine, the situation takes on epidemic proportions.

In Ukraine, a country with one of the fastest-growing HIV rates in the world, the epidemic continues to expand. Newly registered HIV infections have been increasing annually since the turn of the century - by 7 percent in 2000, 13 percent in 2001 and 25 percent in 2002, according to UNAIDS. Every 24 hours, 39 Ukrainians contract HIV, Ukraine's First Vice Minister of Health Viktor Veselskyi said, according to the news agency Ukrinform. In Ukraine, there are 360,000 adults and children living with HIV. In 2003 alone, 20,000 Ukrainians died from AIDS, according to UNAIDS.

Approximately 500 of the estimated 45,000 people who need antiretroviral treatment in Ukraine receive it - despite the fact that treatment access for all is guaranteed by Ukrainian law. What's more, tuberculosis has become the leading cause of death among people living with HIV. The deadly combination of HIV and tuberculosis is a serious concern in Ukraine, where 10 to 15 percent of tuberculosis cases are estimated to be multi-drug resistant, according to UNAIDS.

Yet another factor affecting the spread of HIV and AIDS is that few people know they are infected and thus are unaware that they may be passing the disease on to other people. "Over 90 percent of all those who are HIV-positive in the world do not know their status," Richard Holbrooke wrote in The Washington Post on November 29. "Yet there has never been a serious and sustained campaign to get people to be tested."

In Ukraine, Mr. Yushchenko's administration has taken a number of steps recently to make the average Ukrainian aware of the problem and to fight the epidemic.

The president signed a decree that would improve state management of the country's fight against HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis. The decree created the National Coordinating Council for Prevention of HIV/AIDS to deal with HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis cases. It provides those people affected with free medical aid and establishes, by July 1, 2006, an all-Ukrainian clinic for treating juvenile HIV/AIDS cases.

Moreover, the National Coordinating Council has been actively working with a European Union project to educate Ukrainians about HIV and AIDS. The project is planning a number of seminars in which some 1,500 interagency partners will participate, and it will create education centers in pilot regions of Ukraine and educate secondary school children about the dangers of HIV and AIDS.

The steps taken recently by the Ukrainian government should go a long way toward educating Ukrainians about HIV and AIDS. While there is much more work to be done in Ukraine on this topic, the first steps are often the most important and we are encouraged to see President Yushchenko's resolve in the fight against the growing HIV and AIDS epidemic in Ukraine.

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