100% Life and PEPFAR: 10 years of partnership!
This year marks 10 years (!) since CO 100% Life has been a partner of PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)! We are proud of and grateful for this partnership! After all, it was through the projects supported by PEPFAR and USAID, that a number of innovations and achievements in the field of combating HIV/AIDS in Ukraine became possible!
During all these years, PEPFAR has been a partner that invests quickly and effectively in the boldest solutions to overcome the HIV epidemic.
Immediately after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, PEPFAR’s support allowed us to save lives of 129,000 people who live with HIV in Ukraine and could have been left without medication in wartime. An 18-month’s supply of medicines, i.e. 53 M doses of antiretroviral therapy, were purchased and brought to Ukraine at a fantastically rapid pace. Such times show most clearly who the real partners and friends are. We are sincerely grateful to the greatest friends of Ukrainian patients, and PEPFAR is one of the leading friends as it has been supporting and investing in life for many years.
In 2016, CO 100% Life received the PEPFAR award for Best Partnership: Among the more than 40 countries where the PEPFAR Program operates, the 100% Life received the Best Partnership award among all patient organizations striving for access to treatment of HIV-positive people.
At one time, Jacek Tyszko, Director of UNAIDS in Ukraine (2013-2018), called the USAID RESPECT project (2013-2017) the most successful project in overcoming stigma and discrimination that was implemented.
It is now the sixth year that we have been implementing the largest HIV testing project in the country with PEPFAR’s support. We are proud that every third newly detected PLHIV in the country has been tested as part of the HealthLink project.
The HealthLink project assistance allowed for advocacy for the adoption of a new HIV testing protocol in accordance with the latest WHO recommendations.
For the first time in the project, behavioral screening — an innovative screening questionnaire that helps a doctor
For the first time in Ukraine, it was the HealthLink project that enabled the publicly available opportunity of ordering an oral HIV test to be delivered to patient’s home!
“I recalled again this year how, twenty years ago, international donors saved my life for the first time when the first ARV therapy appeared in Ukraine. Back then, I got a chance to live. This is a very vivid memory that I have been keeping for more than twenty years. That’s why I keep living despite HIV. I make my plans. I am fighting for my country. For my family. This year, PEPFAR saved my life for the second time, when our organization urgently brought medicines to Ukraine owing to PEPFAR’s support. We are grateful to PEPFAR and USAID as they are the partners who are open to new approaches to shape the future in the fight against HIV”, says Dmytro Sherembey, Head of CO 100% Life.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of PEPFAR! Congratulations to the whole team on this anniversary. Every year closed means thousands of lives saved. Every next year means a chance for life for millions.
Read about the 100% Life and USAID/PEPFAR partnership at usaid.gov
Watch the video
