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.