Open letter to support the case of Yekaterina Parfenyuk

News

Open letter to support the case of Yekaterina Parfenyuk

9 October 2019

By Chase the Virus Not the People

To:

Marina Sachek, Director of the State Institution “Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Medical Technologies, Information, Management and Health Economics” (RSPC MT) of the Republic of Belarus

Irina Novik, Deputy Director, RSPC MT

Tatiana Makarevich, Head of the Grant Management Department for Global Fund projects, RSPC MT

Vladimir Karanik, Minister of Health of the Republic of Belarus

Peter Sands, Executive Director, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Valeria Grishechkina, Grant Portfolio Manager, Secretariat of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Date: October 7, 2019

Open Letter

With this letter, we, the representatives of civil society, communities affected by HIV and tuberculosis, as well as professional communities working in the field of combating the three diseases in different countries of the world, express our profound concern as to the actions of the leadership team and employees of the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Medical Technologies, Information, Management and Health Economics (RSPC MT) - the organization that is the Principal Recipient of Global Fund grants in the Republic of Belarus - in relation to Yekaterina Parfenyuk, a current member of the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) of the Republic of Belarus for collaboration with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in representing the interests of the community of people who inject drugs and people living with HIV1 . We condemn the prosecution of Yekaterina Parfenyuk by the RPTC MT and the accusation that she has damaged the business reputation of the RPTC MT owing to her open letter addressed to the RSPC MT and the Global Fund in which she expressed the assumption that the situation related to the provision of medicines in Belarus is problematic and that there are interruptions in the supply of the anti-TB drug ‘Bedaquiline’.