Project History
In October 2003, the Board of Directors of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) approved US $88 million application by the Russian NGO Consortium to implement the five-year project to fight HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Russian Federation.
The Consortium consists of Russian and international non-governmental organizations that possess many years of experience addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic: the Open Health Institute (OHI), FOCUS-MEDIA Foundation, AIDS Infoshare, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW), and Population Services International (PSI).
The donation agreement was signed in July 2004 between the Global Fund and the Open Health Institute, the Principal Recipient of funding. Implementation of the first two-year project phase with a budget of over US $31 million has started on 15th August 2004 and continued till 14th August 2006.
Project Goal
The project aims to stimulate effective national strategy fighting HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation. Activities under the GLOBUS project focus on four main objectives:
Objective 1: Supporting sustainable prevention programmes to increase awareness and reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS among youth and the general population.
Activities in Objective 1 focus on mass media campaigns, health education in secondary schools, development of voluntary counselling and testing, and improvement of the Russian condom market.
Objective 2: Supporting sustainable prevention programmes to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS among vulnerable groups.
Activities in Objective 2 support prevention efforts toward the groups most vulnerable to the HIV epidemic in Russia: injecting drug users (IDU), street children, prisoners, commercial sex workers, and men who have sex with men.
Objective 3: Providing treatment, care, health promotion and social support to people living with HIV/AIDS.
Objective 3 aims to promote the development of medical and counselling services, support to parents living with HIV after the birth of their children and solidarity with people with HIV/AIDS (PLWH).
Currently in Russia, access to ARV therapy is extremely limited. This is especially true for highly vulnerable groups such as injecting drug users, prisoners) which comprise 90% of people with HIV/AIDS in Russia. The implementing organisations will also take the first steps toward comprehensive ARV treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS with an MTCT-plus programme and ensuring that marginalised groups, such as IDUs, have equitable access to treatment.
Objective 4: Advocating improvement in the HIV/AIDS policy environment and building capacity to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS on infected, affected and vulnerable people.
These activities will advocate improvements in national and regional HIV/AIDS policies to ensure an adequate national response to the epidemic, including legislative changes, a price reduction in ARV medication, increased co-ordination and mobilise additional national and international resources. A price reduction of ART (that is currently between $5 000 - $10 000 per person per year) is key in achieving this goal and is an important component of the advocacy activities of the NGO Consortium.
Project Regions
In September 2004, an evaluation committee consisting of the Consortium members and independent experts selected ten regions to participate in the project. The selected regions are: Vologda region, Krasnoyarskiy kray, Nizhniy Novgorod region, Orenburg region, Pskov region, Republic of Buryatia, Republic of Tatarstan, St. Petersburg, Tver region, Tomsk region.
The regions were selected for the project participation via a nation-wide open competition based on a set of criteria including among others prevalence and incidence rates of HIV/AIDS, co-operative spirit among regional authorities, implemented activities by governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as existing regional harm reduction programs. The beneficiaries of the project are governmental organizations, NGOs, PLWHA.
Project activities represent a comprehensive integrated approach to reducing the negative impact of the HIV epidemic in the Russian Federation. Consortium members and their partners co-operate closely with local and regional counterparts and key federal government ministries, including the Ministries of Health, Justice and Education. Project activities are tailored to meet specific needs of each region.
AFEW:
