Live or die in Donbass?

According to the UN data, 6,400 persons were killed, 16,000 wounded, and 1,300,000 had to leave their homes as a result of the war in the East of Ukraine since April 2014. Tens of thousands of people were left without treatment, including hundreds of clients of opioid substitution treatment (OST) programs. As of the beginning of June 2015, 275 clients were still receiving their substitution therapy in the warfare zone in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Before the war, over 1,000 people received OST services there. Sites are running out of the Methadone. The stock of Buprenorphine was depleted back in February 2015.

The Ukrainian Government hasn’t allowed the delivery of OST narcotic drugs to the uncontrolled territories, and the authorities of “LPR” (Luhansk People’s Republic) decided to abandon OST and close the program. All the efforts of international organizations to ensure supplies of the drugs to Donetsk failed. There is a need to save the drug, so the maximum doze in Donetsk is only 25 mg. It is 3 times less than the average doze in OST programs elsewhere in the country. In May 2014, 800 OST clients were deprived of the treatment in Crimea after the ban of the Russian authorities. As a result, dozens of OST clients residing in the peninsula passed away.

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