Azerbaijani Consortium for HIV/AIDS Control held a number of meetings with non-governmental, governmental and international organizations. During the meetings, searching new financing programs to fight HIV / AIDS was mentioned as an issue appeared due to decrease of state and foreign financing of projects.
At the Consortium and AIDS Center meeting it was noted that general financing for implementing HIV strategy in Azerbaijan is state. Due to economic crisis, a sharp drop in world oil prices, and local currency inflation leading to higher prices for ARV drugs, the risks appear, as it may be difficult to allocate necessary state funding.
Currently, the Global Fund is the only foreign donor providing costs for HIV prevention and treatment in Azerbaijan. The World Bank included Azerbaijan in the list of 55 countries in Europe and Central Asia where “income is above average.” For this reason, funding from many donors began to decrease, and completely stopped in some cases. Thus, for 2019-2020 the Global Fund will reduce the financing of programs by 44% as of 2016-2018.
Public governmental organizations hope the law on “social support” to be considered and adopted by Milli Majlis this autumn. The bill focuses on HIV-related social services and state support for such projects.
The Consortium members put forward proposals for both the adoption of a new “fighting illicit narcotic and psychotropic drugs trafficking” law and amending the Criminal Code provisions aimed at reducing responsibility for drug users, and preparing a new bill to be discussed in September at the next Milli Majlis meeting.
The meetings of the Azerbaijani Consortium for HIV / AIDS Control with non-governmental, governmental and international organizations were held within the regional program “Partnership for Equitable Access to HIV Care Continuum in EECA” implemented by ECUO in partnership with EHRN and financial support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
04.08.2017