Brussels Discusses New Political Priorities on HIV

On September 25, the third expert meeting “HIV Outcomes: Beyond Viral Suppression” is held in Brussels, where political priorities on HIV are discussed: long-term health, concomitant diseases and the sustainability of the public health care service. Policymakers and stakeholders from HIV communities and health policy representatives participate in its work: patients, doctors, scientists and industry.
Vladimir Zhovtiak , ECUO PLWH President   will present  “Concept of the Eastern European and Central Asian Association of People Living with HIV on Access to Treatment in the EECA Region»  to the participants of  the «HIV Outcomes: Beyond viral suppression».
“Eastern Europe and Central Asia are an integral part of Europe (according to the classification of WHO and the World Bank). At the same time, EECA remains the only sub-region in Europe, in which the number of new registered HIV cases, the level of AIDS deaths and the most new cases of HIV infection, which  in  his turn , Jeffrey Lazarus confirmed. To date, hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive people living in Eastern Europe have been discriminated against and stigmatized in the health care system, due to forced replacement of treatment regimens, from the class of protease inhibitors (PIs) to older NNRTI drugs with severe side effects.
This, in turn, reduced the quality of life of HIV-infected people, and led to the withdrawal of a large number of patients from the treatment process. This form of discrimination and stigmatization will lead not only to a large number of new deaths, but also to the formation of the new resistant forms of the virus. For this reason, our task is to achieve a unified approach to the entire region of Europe, “says Vladimir Zhovtiak, the President of East Europe and Central Asia Union of PLWH.
The meeting also has discussed the activities of the World Health Organization and the European Union on HIV, including the possibility of a new or updated political project aimed at response  to HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis in the framework  of an integrated approach.