Heightened uncertainty for Ukraine’s emergency health response

Responding to HIV in Ukraine has required extraordinary determination and ingenuity on the part of organisations grappling with a set of unprecedented challenges. The outbreak of war forced people living with HIV, along with millions of other people, to leave everything behind. However for those living with HIV, this upheaval brought additional challenges, affecting both their physical and mental well-being.

APH has been an increasingly important player in the national response, finding innovative ways to address the challenges faced by the communities it serves. Since the outbreak of the war, APH has been responsible for diagnosing nearly half of the new HIV cases. In the early days of the war, they supported tens of thousands of displaced Ukranians living with HIV, both in-country and but also in more than a dozen countries, through the use of innovative online technology. The HelpNOW platform was a vital lifeline for displaced Ukrainians providing a variety of interactive online support to 40,000 people since the outbreak of the war.

Originally established to tackle the HIV pandemic, APH has been a partner of Frontline AIDS since its inception in 2000. Over the course of the almost 25 years of its existence, APH has diversified into other complementary areas of health support, including harm reduction for drug users, tackling TB and Hepatitis B and C. More recently, APH has provided emergency health services to people living on the frontlines of the conflict, as well as rehabilitation support to people with disabilities resulting from war injuries. The 40 mobile health clinics it operates are, in many cases, the only professional medical support to hundreds of communities largely cut off from other forms of health assistance.

Watch this short video interview with John and Anna Korobchuk from APH, as they discuss how the mobile clinic services are making a real difference in reaching people in liberated and frontline rural areas.

However, the diverse support that APH provides to vulnerable people in need of multiple forms of emergency assistance is now facing growing uncertainty. Frontline services have been affected by the decision of the US administration to terminate some international support. Some of the most important work that APH is doing, including the highly successful work of the mobile teams focused on finding new HIV cases, like I witnessed in Lviv and Kyiv, is being implemented with US support.

Andriy Klepikov, Executive Director of APH, is rightly proud of the impressive work they are doing through these clinics. He is optimistic that these highly effective services will continue to be supported by the US government, along with other interventions supported through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), since he believes it is ultimately in both Ukraine’s and the US’ best interests to do so. However, for this not to happen would be a disastrous interruption for the hundreds of thousands of people APH reaches, many of whom have compromised health conditions. This includes people living with HIV, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, those living on the edge of conflict, and war veterans and civilians who are undergoing painstaking processes of rehabilitation.

Ukraine’s future is on a knife’s edge. APH will remain crucial to the lives of hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people in Ukraine, both in times of conflict and in times of peace. They are solution-finders, friends to some of the most marginalised people in society, and a vital complement to stretched government health services. The potential loss of funding support from the US and the retreat from aid by many other donors could not come at a more precarious moment for the people of this embattled country.

Click to view some photos from the visit with short descriptions.

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