The Russian government will increase funding for the fight against HIV by 13 billion per year

By 2020, the government of the Russian Federation intends to invest an additional 52.9 billion rubles in the fight against HIV; on average, subsidies per year will increase by 13 billion, RBC reports .

These data were announced in the financial and economic feasibility study for the draft HIV strategy until 2020, a copy of which was obtained by the publication. The authenticity of the document was confirmed by a government source.

The Ministry of Health approved a strategy to combat HIV infection in 2016, but the project did not indicate the amount of funding. The department must submit an action plan for the strategy in January 2017, but the volume of services provided depends on the allocation of additional funding.

The draft federal budget for the project for three years indicates that more than 17 billion rubles per year will be spent annually on the treatment and prevention of HIV and hepatitis B and C. The department did not specify how much money will be spent on treatment and how much on prevention. By order of the government, annual expenses for the program will be increased to 30 billion rubles.

Thus, according to the approved strategy, the authorities plan to annually check more than a third of the total population by 2020. However, without additional funds, only every fourth resident of Russia will be able to complete it. To increase the number of examinations by one and a half times, an additional 3.2 billion rubles were required annually, the Ministry of Health calculated.

The situation is the same for other indicators. According to the strategy to combat HIV in 2017, almost 70% of HIV patients will have to be registered at a dispensary and receive special therapy. Based on 70 thousand rubles per patient, the ministry required additional costs of 9.2 billion rubles for therapy for 132 thousand patients. Laboratory support for patients will cost another 792.3 million rubles.

Experts at the HIV/AIDS Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC.ru) believe that the allocated funds will be enough even for 390 thousand patients, since the most common first-stage HIV treatment regimen costs two to three times less than that declared by the ministry - about 25 thousand rubles. In this case, it would be possible to provide assistance to 90-100% of registered patients.

The director of the Federal AIDS Center, Vadim Pokrovsky, considered the proposed funding one-sided. “Test and treat is a one-sided approach, even if money is allocated to provide full drug coverage for all identified HIV-infected people,” he commented. — Prevention programs, public awareness, and work with injecting drug users must be provided. Only in this case will the epidemic be stopped.”

The adopted strategy includes prevention and awareness, but their budget is still unknown.

According to the government, over the past 10 years the number of infected people has been growing by 10% per year, reaching a million people by 2016. Only 230 thousand people received therapy in 2015, and the increase in new cases compared to 2014 was 8%. In July, the UN recognized Russia as the epicenter of the global HIV epidemic.

In early November, the head of the Ministry of Health, Veronika Skvortsova, announced that in ten Russian regions the situation with the spread of HIV is critical. According to Skvortsova, among the regions with a high prevalence of infection, the Sverdlovsk region is in first place.