Ukrainian HIV patients are worried their life-saving drugs will run out amid uncertainty over U.S. funding.
President Donald Trump’s massive ax in January to projects funded by its international development agency USAID hit NGOs and government-run projects in Ukraine working to tackle one of the largest HIV epidemics in Europe.
The U.S. administration later reversed cuts to life-saving humanitarian assistance for 90 days — while it conducts a review of foreign aid — bringing a reprieve to these Ukrainian services. But with no long-term funding decision in sight, and with supplies of medicines only sufficient until November, health staff and patients are fearful they will have no means to control the deadly infectious disease.
“We’ve never had such an apocalypse before,” said Anzhela Moiseyenko, who heads the Chernihiv Network, a Ukrainian organization of people living with HIV.
Ukrainian services have already had a bitter taste of what might come.
The temporary pause left the country scrambling to maintain treatment for over 116,000 people with HIV, while some testing and prevention services have scaled down and may close, as urgent treatment needs take priority.
The Chernihiv Network ran an HIV testing service through three years of war. But at the end of January the USAID-funded project abruptly stopped for two months as funds ceased, Moiseyenko said.
Deliveries of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to Ukraine were stranded en route by the stop-work order, said Dmytro Sherembey, who heads NGO 100% Life. Some stocks, including for children, are now running short, he said. Contracts with pharmaceutical companies had to be cancelled then restarted, while funding uncertainty affects procurement, which has to be planned months in advance.
“We have no guarantee they won’t announce a halt again. There is no system through which we can plan for the future,” said Sherembey, who was among the first 100 people in Ukraine to start ART in 2002 with U.S. funding. The therapy has to be taken daily for life. “You can’t put life on hold,” he said.
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