Envoy Reports 8,000 HIV/AIDS Patients At Risk In Eastern Ukraine
DONETSK, Ukraine, July 20 (UPI) — Michel Kazatchkine, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, is calling on the Security Council to handle a growing crisis in eastern Ukraine, where approximately 8,000 people with HIV/AIDS are facing a critical shortage of medicine.
Kazatchkine, who spoke to reporters just ahead of the International AIDS Society conference held in Vancouver, underscored that patients are “caught in the political crossfire” between Ukrainian and pro-Russian separatist fighters. Necessary medications, like opiods, have been blocked at border checkpoints, according to news reports.
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Kazatchkine said the Russian-speaking Lugansk and Donetsk regions once housed 25 percent of Ukraine’s HIV-positive populations. Thousands have fled the war-torn regions, according to the U.N. envoy. Russia bans the use of opiods while Ukraine limits their shipment.
Doctors without Borders have pledged to deliver and oversee all treatment. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is reportedly one of the fastest growing in the world in Ukraine, and as late as 2012, 27,800 Ukrainians died of AIDS, as reported by Sky News/Australia.
“I am calling on the United States, Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia to do something,” said Kazatchkine. Hundreds of children were born with HIV unnecessarily infected in Ukraine last year because of a shortage of vital drugs, Sky News reported in February.
Giovanna Barberis, the UNICEF representative in the Ukraine, told Sky News: “There is a potential for real disaster. Because of the crisis in Ukraine, the system is breaking down and there is a shortage of antretrovial drugs. They cost money, they are expensive and whilst the international community is there to support, it is probably not enough.”
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