Crimea without medicines
Stocks of medicines for the HIV-positive prisoners in the peninsula were used up on June 10, and the rest of the patients have them just enough to last until October, but what then?The Day covered before concerns of the NGOs that care for people living with HIV that Crimean patients would soon be left without medication. This time has arrived. On June 10, stocks of antiretroviral therapy drugs intended to help 83 prisoners were used up.
Services that provide essential drugs for specific groups of patients according to certain programs are currently running on reserves. Russia is in no hurry to respond to appeals and introduce new schemes for the supply of drugs. Our Ministry of Health does not have jurisdiction over these matters, while volunteers and community organizations who helped the sick turn to the competent authorities of the Russian Federation, but have, in fact, little hope of being heard.
The All-Ukrainian Charity Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS reported that Crimea and Sevastopol branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service was open about the lack of medicines. “People who do not have the necessary drugs have to interrupt treatment, which will lead to the development of resistance to antiretroviral drugs or death,” Anna Konstantynova, expert of the All-Ukrainian Charity Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, explained. “In addition, the drug Tenvir, which is included in the scheme of treatment for 32 HIV-positive prisoners, is absent from the list of vital and essential drugs approved by the Government of the Russian Federation for 2014. Accordingly, it cannot be procured using funds from the federal budget.”
Purchasing medicines for HIV patients in Crimea as well as throughout Ukraine was responsibility of the network’s experts past year. The effort was sponsored by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. They were then passed as humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian penitentiary service. So, if we talk about locations, these drugs are still available in Kyiv, but transferring them to Crimea is impossible because of legal obstacles.
Chairwoman of the network’s Crimean branch Natalia Yehorova told us that for these medicines to get from Kyiv to Simferopol, Crimean local branch of the penitentiary service had to submit a request to Kyiv. “They are prevented from doing so, and they have, in fact, no right to appeal to Ukraine, because now they have new top leadership,” she continued. “Other HIV patients have enough medicines to last until late October, maybe early November. Drugs delivered from Moscow will come for them later. These may already include different drugs which would also be risky and dangerous.”
Activists have sent appeals and letters to the Russian penitentiary service, but there have been no answers yet, even though communication and collaboration with this agency is the only real opportunity to prevent human deaths. Yehorova said that they would make further inquiries, but still had not determined who to appeal to, because they were still unsure who the final decision-makers were.
