USAID Helps Build Human and Institutional Capacity to Fight Russia's Growing HIV/AIDS Epidemic
USAID and the American International Health Alliance (AIHA)
announced a new partnership between U.S. healthcare institutions and their
counterparts in Russia. The partnership will focus on creating a comprehensive,
integrated
program for providing care and treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS in
St. Petersburg.
Funded through USAID/Russia's HIV/AIDS Operational Plan, the St. Petersburg partnership is the first of four new alliances that AIHA will create and manage under USAID's HIV/AIDS Treatment, Care, and Support Initiative. Additional partnerships will be created in the cities of Togliatty (Samara Oblast), Saratov (Saratov Oblast), and Orenburg (Orenburg Oblast).
St. Petersburg is home to nearly 30,000 officially registered
people living with HIV/AIDS, but the actual number of HIV-infected individuals
is estimated to be as much as five times greater than reported. Although the
disease is currently concentrated in St. Petersburg's high-risk groups - primarily
commercial sex workers and intravenous drug users - the infection is now spreading
to the general population through heterosexual contact. The number of women
of reproductive
age with new infections is also increasing, which increases the problem of
mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
Similar in nature to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief, the overall goal of this new partnership is to create targeted
HIV/AIDS-related care and treatment programs that will serve as replicable
models for the entire Russian Federation, which is currently home to one of
the fastest growing rates of new HIV infections in the world. These model programs
will embrace a wide range of psycho-social services and clinical interventions - including
highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and treatment for the prevention
of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV - in an effort to provide comprehensive
care to people living with HIV/AIDS.
Over the course of the next three years, AIHA's new HIV/AIDS
twinning partnerships in Russia will help the targeted cities establish effective
systems and processes to improve their human and organizational capacity to
provide high-quality care and services to HIV-positive individuals. The project
will also serve as an important capacity-building mechanism that will enable
Russia to successfully attain and utilize grants from the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
Under the direction of Dr. Elena Vinogradova, the St. Petersburg City AIDS Center will serve as the lead Russian institution for the partnership. The St. Petersburg Health Committee, Botkin Clinical Hospital, and the Russian Federal Center will collaborate on the project to further ensure the development of a fully-integrated, community-based model of care and treatment.
The highly successful twinning model was developed by AIHA
to address local, regional, and national healthcare issues in Eurasia. Since
its inception in 1992, AIHA has created and managed 24 sustainable partnerships
between U.S. and Russian communities and institutions. These partnerships enable
healthcare providers from the region to acquire life-saving knowledge and skills
through professional peer-to-peer exchanges that are in accordance with the
U.S. government's "Partnerships for Freedom" initiative. U.S. partners typically
include a consortium of health institutions and related organizations ranging
from
state and local departments of health, hospital systems, healthcare provider
networks, community health centers, faith-based groups, schools of medicine
and public health, non-governmental organizations, and professional associations.
Through its Quality Assurance Project, the Maryland-based
University Research Co. will provide technical assistance for these partnerships,
working with
AIHA to design a high-quality, replicable HIV/AIDS treatment, care, and support
system rooted in evidence-based medical practices and compatible with international
standards.
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