In Kazakhstan, more frequent become the cases of ungrounded denial to assign the disability of HIV-positive children that leads to restrictions on equal access to basic standards of social services for all children affected by HIV/AIDS epidemic. Regarding the situation, the ECUO Parent Union officially addressed the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Baktyzhan Sagintayev, with a request to take this situation under his control. It can be solved based on the successful experience of South Kazakhstan area where children with HIV are “automatically” considered disabled people up to 16 years whatever the infection way, the disease stage, residence are.
“In Kazakhstan, parents and guardians officially refer to Medical and Social Expertise Service and the Ministries of Health and Social Protection, and they receive a denial in assigning the disability of children with HIV diagnosis. The doctor’s verdict is one: “Documents are studied. The child is internally inspected, at the moment of inspection no data on disability”, despite the pathological condition caused by for life intake of strong HIV medicines assigned for children, requiring long therapeutic correction in case of recovery absence! As a result, our children do not have access to social and rehabilitation services, including many of those who are on last stage IV of the disease (AIDS). Therefore, we submitted the letter to the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Baktyzhan Sagintayev, with a request to address the situation, taking into account the successful experience of the country in combating HIV” – notes Co-Chairperson of the ECUO Parent Union, Eugeniya Smirnova.
In the letter, the ECUO Parents Union notes that “In most cases, the HIV-infected children are those born with HIV children who are guarded by their grandmothers, as their parents died from AIDS, or are deprived of their custody. The families tolerate acute need, as even a child’s travel by bus on examination to the AIDS Center bears the financial load, not mentioning the quality food, being essential for the growing organism that intakes strong highly toxic drugs of a lifelong application.
Unfortunately, the atmosphere of stigma and discrimination is retained in the society, is to such HIV-positive children and their families”.
As of March 2017, in Kazakhstan, the disability assigned to only 270 of the 445 HIV-positive children. A large part of children with assigned disability – 227 lives in South Kazakhstan area.
In this region of the country, the HIV-positive children are treated by exclusively original drugs, and the level of social assistance corresponds to high standards. By the decision of the doctors of Medical and Social Expertise, they obtain the status of “disabled child up to 16years” which allows families of HIV-positive children to receive monthly monetary benefits for disabled child care and pension on child disability from the Republican budget (in total – 59,000 tenge per month); benefit from all other additional privileges of the Republican and local budget, as well as programs for medical and social rehabilitation;
As a result, for 10 years in the region, there were no children with AIDS-related mortality, no abandoned children, high adherence to treatment on the level of 90%.