Russian regions must treat non-registered HIV patients
Regions to begin treating non-registered people suffering from HIV
10.03.2021
The Ministry of Health is to send an instruction to all Russian regions by 1 April stating that it will be unacceptable for them to refuse treatment to non-registered patients with HIV. This was reported by Grigory Sverdlin, Director of the homeless charity Nochlezhka, on his Facebook page.
Sverdlin said that the problem of providing antiretroviral therapy to non-registered people has been unresolved for many years. This has been an issue not just for the homeless but also for those whose registration was in another region and not where a person in need of treatment was living.
“We were able to put a stop to this nonsense in St Petersburg in 2018 but had little success at federal level. Now, with this instruction, the situation should finally be resolved”, Sverdlin wrote.
By 1 April, the Ministries of Finance and Health should have developed an inter-budgetary system to facilitate the transfer of patients from one part of the regional HIV patients’ register to another. By 1 June, the Ministries of Health and Justice must have carried out an evaluation of the implementation of Part 6 of Article 180 of the Criminal Executive Code as it affects those in need of antiretroviral treatment.
