IPS Examines Reports of Police Crackdown on Ukrainian Drug Substitution Program Patients

Inter Press Service examines reports of a police crackdown in the Ukraine on people enrolled in drug substitution programs. Though international health experts say drug substitution therapy can slow the spread of HIV/AIDS through injection drug use, the article describes tensions within the Ukraine government over such programs, which have pitted the interior minister against the prime minister. "There are currently just over 5,000 injecting drug users registered in drug substitution programmes, with plans for as many as 20,000 to be participating by 2014," according to the news service. The article describes reports by patients enrolled in drug substitution programs of being taken into custody by police for questions and threatened to have their medicine withheld if they refused to cooperate. "International institutions, including UNAIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which fund HIV programmes in the country, have demanded an end to the crackdown," IPS writes (Stracansky, 3/22).

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