India Delegation visits Ukraine Harm Reduction Programme

India delegation from National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) and India HIV/AIDS Alliance visited Ukraine to learn from harm reduction programme implemented by International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine and its partners.

The visitors had an opportunity to meet with peer officials from Ukraine, visit OST sites and NGO run drop-in-centers, get familiar with pharmacy-based needle-syringe programmes, go along outreach routs of NGO workers as well as ride mobile ambulance providing needles and rapid testing services to drug users and sex workers, visit an apartment of a secondary syringe exchange drug using client.

The visit showed a very strong asset for experience exchange. India concentrated epidemic driven by sex workers is now gaining momentum in injecting drug users, while in Ukraine the initially drug user driven epidemic is moving to sexual transmission. India is running a huge ART programme covering some 650 000 patients, yet drugs funded by the Global Fund. Ukraine has a much smaller ART coverage of some 37 000 patients with strong need to scale up, primarily funded by the national budget. Surprisingly both countries are covering 160 000 drug users annually and have some 7-9 000 patients on OST: all on buprenoprhine in India and almost all on methadone in Ukraine.

Most interest was raised by rapid testing for HIV and STI in NGO settings and in mobile clinics, methadone OST programmes and government-NGO collaboration models, pharmacy-based needle and syringe programme.

India guests appreciated the visit and plan to use the experience gained in finalizing the fourth National AIDS Control Programme about to start in India and be effective for the next 5 years and within CAHR project by India HIV/AIDS Alliance.

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