Ukraine appeals to West for help to fight AIDS

Ukraine, under scrutiny in the West as three of its neighbours join the European Union in May, has seen the number of AIDS case rise quickly since independence in 1991.

With about 62,000 HIV cases registered, experts fear the real figure in the country of 48 million could reach about 400,000, or about one percent of the adult population. Some 3,500 people have died of AIDS, the health ministry said.

Many voluntary and non-government groups have joined the fight, but fears among health professionals were raised when late last month the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended payments due to mismanagement.

Olha Lapushenko, first deputy minister for health and Ukraine's chief public health officer, acknowledged the ministry might have done too little to persuade the Global Fund to stay. But her concern was for those now going without medicine.

"Today we need medicine for these 2,100 people, but now we cannot start treating them. And this worries me as a doctor," she told a news conference, speaking about 2,000 adults and 100 infected children who had been earmarked for medical treatment.

"The position of this country is that... we are not ready to go into unending talks. What Ukraine needs now is a definite decision... we can say that we will be open in our relations to all international organisations which want to work with us."

The Global Fund, is an independent group which seeks to be the main conduit for aid from rich to poor countries to combat disease, financing 225 disease prevention and treatment programmes in 121 countries.

It suspended payments to Ukraine saying it was concerned with the slow progress of the programmes it supported. Ukraine, it said, was lagging "substantially" behind its targets. The fund had approved three grants worth a total of $25 million over two years to Ukraine, with $7.5 million already disbursed. Ukraine has spent only $740,000 so far, it said. Health officials said they had agreed with the government to return unused money to the fund. Efforts would be concentrated on pressing on with programmes to boost the number of people on therapy with anti-AIDS drugs using available state funds.

"We decided to return the money given to Ukraine by the Global Fund... and the cabinet's reserve fund will pay instead for the medicines for 2,000 adults and 100 children," Lapushenko said. "We are interested not in money, but in medicine."