AHF’s New Clinic Brings Cutting-edge Medicine to Odessa

AHF’s New Clinic Brings Cutting-edge Medicine to Odessa

In Global, News, Ukraine by AHF

AHF cut the red ribbon on its very first clinic in Ukraine, in the port city of Odessa on the coast of the Black Sea at the end of 2017.  Odessa is the country’s third-largest city and has one of the nation’s highest burdens of HIV.

AHF Ukraine has been in the country since 2009 and currently supports treatment and care for 28,418 clients at government healthcare facilities. The newly opened “Test and Treat Clinic,” as it has been officially named, is the first site owned and run by AHF Ukraine, in partnership with the Odessa Regional AIDS Center.

“This clinic will work from a comprehensive model of early HIV detection and its immediate and effective treatment,” said AHF Europe Bureau Chief Zoya Shabarova. “It’s critical that this clinic becomes the example of a new approach to diagnosis and treatment services, so it can be used as evidence for policy changes in the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS.”

With HIV incidence of 876.4 per 100,000 people in the Odessa Oblast (county), the city is a key priority for AHF as the region’s administrative center. Odessa was the entry point through which the epidemic began to spread in Ukraine in the 1980s.

“There is an urgent need to control HIV infection in this region, where the level of HIV morbidity is one of the highest in Ukraine,” said Director of Odessa Department of Healthcare Vyacheslav Polyasny. “Broadening access to rapid testing and treatment services is extremely important.”

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