Alliance signs Global Fund Round 6 grant for five-year programme in Ukraine
24 September 2007
After an intensive 18 months of preparation, the Alliance in Ukraine and the All-Ukrainian Network of People living with HIV have become Principal Recipients of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s Round 6 grant to Ukraine. Together they will implement the five-year programme Support for HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment and care for most vulnerable populations.
The programme aims to reduce HIV transmission, prevalence and mortality by focusing on key populations at higher risk of HIV. The priorities will be HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for people living with and children affected by HIV, injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, prisoners, and sex workers. A considerable scale-up of substitution therapy will be accompanied by the provision of voluntary counselling and testing (including rapid HIV tests and tests for sexually transmitted infections) and close integration of prevention, treatment, care and support services.
The budget for the programme’s first phase (2007-2009) is $29.6 million – making this the second largest Global Fund Round 6 programme after India. Alliance Ukraine will handle $15.6 million of the budget, with the All-Ukrainian network handling the remainder.
By the end of the five year programme, the Alliance expects to see an increase in safer behaviour among injecting drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men – for example, in the use of sterile injecting equipment and condoms. It also expects to see a corresponding decrease in HIV prevalence among target groups. Scaling up treatment, care, and support for people living with HIV will lead to a reduction in Ukraine’s AIDS mortality rate.
The round 6 programme will build on the successful implementation of the current programme Overcoming HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine 2004-2008 by the Alliance and the All-Ukrainian network – which has seen the scaling up of antiretroviral treatment in Ukraine from 137 people to over 4,500 on 1 August 2007. Other successes of the current programme include over 500 people taking part in substitution therapy programmes and over 185,000 people most at risk of HIV being reached with HIV prevention services.
