Russia: Several regional hospitals face stock-outs of TB medicines
Representatives of Russian NGOs say that several regional hospitals face stock-outs of TB medicines, which in turn may lead to a mortality increase among TB-infected patients. This situation, according to them, is closely linked to the refusal of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation (MSHD) to accept aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Fund was ready to donate $127 mln to the Russian Federation, but in response Russia itself expressed its willingness to become a donor of the Global Fund.
The situation with TB medicines started to get worse in February, said NGO representatives. A member of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition in Eastern Europe and Central Asia Denis Godlevskiy says that several patients have died in St. Petersburg’s hospitals due to lack of medicines. “The thing is that the money from the federal budget and the drugs no longer reach St. Petersburg, let alone the regions", he adds. According to Mr. Godlevskiy, St. Petersburg Prison Hospital Gaza received no funding whatsoever in 2012, and in the first half of 2011, around 30 people with HIV/TB co-infection died in that hospital. According to a medical source of Kommersant, “the situation is close to critical: in Ulianovsk, for example, there are almost no drugs at all, the money allocated is not enough". The experts say that in autumn there can be "a very serious increase in TB rates”.
According to representatives of NGOs, the deficit of medicines is directly linked to the refusal of Russia to accept aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of the largest international funding bodies. Over the course of a 5-year program, Russia could receive $127 for combating TB. 20 thousand people with severe forms of TB could have been covered by treatemnt programs.
However, one of the authors of the application to the Fund, Valentin Pokrovskiy, Head of the Epidemiology Research Institute, received a letter from the Ministry of Health, signed by Vice-Minister Veronika Skvortsova, stating that Russia no longer needs international aid. “Russia now has a Global Fund donor status, and with regard to that we consider it inappropriate to include Russia in the proposal", the letter stated.
The Global Fund approved the application; however, it was also said that if the NGOs and the Ministry of Health did not reach a conclusion before March 20, 2012, GF would be forced to call the grant off. In its recent statement, Mark Eldon-Edington, Director of Country Programs Cluster, informed the applicants that the TB proposal would not be signed and that there was no right to appeal available regarding that decision.
Representatives of the Ministry of Health have in the meanwhile their own perception of the situation. Last Friday, Ludmila Mikhailova, Assistant Director of the Department of Medical Prevention, Support and Healthcare Development told the journalists that the GF tuberculosis program is ineffective. She also said that in the regions where it was implemented, the TB mortality rates were growing. At the same time, according to the statement of the Ministry issued last Friday, “starting from 2009, the TB incidence has been declining. Over the period of three years, the incidence rates have gone down by 14.2% in comparison with 2008. The mortality rates have decreased by 38.5% as opposed to 2005”.
“Those figures are in fact cunning: there is no actual TB statistics available. There are figures for the mass media, and there are figures for internal use, which are not publicly accessible”, says Mr. Godlevskiy. According to him, the aid from the GF has greatly supported the Russian healthcare for a long period of time, helping many patients to survive.
