Although the Trump administration plans to drastically slash funding of HIV programs in the United States in the coming year, it is allocating $10 million to combat the sexually transmitted disease (STD) in Ukraine, which already gets an exorbitant amount of aid from American taxpayers. Congress has allocated an astounding $195 billion in spending to the war in Ukraine and though most of it goes to military causes a big chunk has gone to humanitarian projects rife with corruption. Judicial Watch launched an investigation after a federal audit exposed fraud in the government’s extensive Ukrainian humanitarian aid initiative and last year sued the notoriously corrupt State Department offshoot known as U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that disbursed some $35 billion in aid to the former Soviet republic since the Russian invasion in 2022.
Some of that money went to failed HIV programs in Ukraine that were later involved in criminal activity, a point of concern that should stop the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars. A few years ago, Judicial Watch exposed one of the fraudulent Ukrainian HIV charities that received tens of millions of dollars from Uncle Sam as well as generous contributions from leftwing billionaire George Soros. It was known as 100% Life and its purported mission was to fight for the life of people living with HIV in Ukraine’s 25 regions. But the Ukrainian HIV charity also helped another group embezzle international assistance and authorities launched an investigation that exposed a broad illicit scheme. The head of 100% Life’s board of directors, HIV-infected activist Dmytro Sherembey, was also investigated. A year earlier he published a book about AIDS that promotes the legalization of sex work and illicit drug use without punishment. Long before the Russian invasion, corruption in Ukraine robbed HIV patients of crucial medicine, according to various reports published by news outlets and international human rights groups.
There is no indication that anything has changed as the U.S. announces the latest grant to help the eastern European nation combat an epidemic of HIV, which has reportedly intensified since the war began. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will distribute the $10 million award to help the war torn nation’s inadequate Public Health Center (PHC) and Ministry of Health (MOH) enhance life-saving assistance for HIV conditions. The objective is to ensure that targeted HIV testing, treatment, retention and prevention services are widely available, according to the grant announcement issued this month. “Since February 2022, the global HIV program in Ukraine has encountered unprecedented challenges,” the document states. “Amid the ongoing war, it’s been especially challenging to meet the expanding needs of people at higher risk for HIV. The destruction of Ukrainian health and other key infrastructure has created a substantial risk of service interruptions and devastating challenges in availability of life-saving services.”
The money will fund innovative, data-driven models and interventions for high-risk HIV populations, community services that help the infected adhere to treatment and address gaps in availability and use of essential life-saving HIV prevention services, among other things. High-risk HIV populations are described as people who inject drugs and their partners, people in prisons and other closed settings, those with high-risk sexual behavior and their partners as well as the displaced. The U.S. counts community-based HIV testing, linking the infected with care and using social network testing strategies to find those infected as past achievements in combatting Ukraine’s HIV crisis. It also lists complicated access to high-risk HIV populations due to security reasons, patients dropping out of treatment and late HIV diagnosis as its biggest challenges. “Amid the ongoing war, it’s been especially challenging to meet the expanding needs of people at higher risk for HIV,” the CDC grant document states. “The destruction of Ukrainian health and other key infrastructure has created a substantial risk of service interruptions and devastating challenges in availability of life-saving services.” People at higher risk of HIV need even more intensive support since the war began, the CDC claims.
