Seriously ill patients picketing Cabinet of Ministers to demand funding of medicines
More than a hundred patients with bags over their heads and nooses around their necks lined up in front of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
In such a way they wanted to show the Government that the draft budget for 2016 regarding medicines dooms people with deadly diseases to die.
The seriously ill Ukrainians from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Rivne, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Volyn, and Ternopil regions came to participate in The Doomed action to defend their right to life.
According to the estimates of the Health Ministry of Ukraine, at least UAH 8.1 billion should be stipulated in the budget in order to provide the patients with the necessary medicines. However, the draft budget for next year stipulates only UAH 3.9 billion for the purchase of medicines, which is even less than last year.
The treatment of children ill with cystic fibrosis (a severe genetic disease that affects the lungs and pancreas) requires UAH 23 million instead of the planned UAH 8 million. So, only 34% of young patients will get the necessary medicines. The rest are doomed to horrible and slow death from lack of oxygen.
Moreover, the draft budget for 2016 provides on average no more than 30% of patients with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, orphan diseases, and cancer with the necessary medicines. Nine out of ten patients with hepatitis and three out of four HIV-positive Ukrainians will be left without treatment.
“Due to the fact that the funding for treating HIV/AIDS patients was almost doubled in 2012, we managed to stop the spread of the epidemic and to reduce mortality for the first time. If the Government does not allocate the sufficient funding this time, we will have a new outbreak of the AIDS epidemic,” Dmytro Sherembey, the Head of the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, said.
In addition, in his opinion, the international donors may stop to help Ukraine in overcoming the epidemic, because they will not see that the government increases spending to support the seriously ill patients.
