UNICEF extends the partnership with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Ukraine

Kyiv, 19 May 2022.   UNICEF announces a further extension of its partnership with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) to provide vital medicines and health services in Ukraine through the signature of an Emergency Fund grant.

This extension is an important part of UNICEF’s broad and growing support for the Ukrainian government and the people of Ukraine in the face of the ongoing war’s devastating impacts on their health, security and well-being. Attacks on civilians and non-military facilities such as hospitals, clinics, schools and apartment buildings have caused tens of thousands of deaths and injuries, forced millions to flee, and severely disrupted the delivery of, and access to, physical and mental health services, education, and food and nutrition.

As is always the case in conflicts, the most vulnerable people, including those who rely on a steady supply of medicines to stay healthy and alive, are in the most precarious position. UNICEF is committed to maintaining and expanding its contributions to confront the cruel and indiscriminate depredations against them by supporting the health care system to continue delivering the drugs and other services needed by people with chronic health conditions. They include people across Ukraine who are living with HIV and/or tuberculosis (TB), two potentially deadly infections that the Global Fund and UNICEF have supported the government and its civil society partners in confronting and controlling for many years.

UNICEF is a pre-qualified Emergency Fund principal recipient for the Global Fund and has deep and extensive expertise in the logistical arrangements needed to identify and overcome service delivery gaps. With the extension of the grant, it is prepared to use all its best efforts and opportunities to deliver lifesaving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), TB medications and other indispensable commodities and support to the people of Ukraine across the areas of HIV and TB. These efforts will complement other activities UNICEF is supporting directly and indirectly in Ukraine to mitigate the war’s debilitating social and economic effects.

UNICEF’s provision of support and commodities through the grant will be done in close coordination with other partners including the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and local civil society groups that have long played a central role in identifying, reaching and supporting people living with and affected by HIV and TB across the country. To the fullest extent possible, UNICEF will be guided by the examples and lessons learned from the heroic efforts of thousands of people working with and in support of these groups since the war began. This includes responding quickly, efficiently and flexibly to requests from in-country partners – and especially the three main Global Fund principal recipients – for the medicines and services needed to avoid stock-outs.

Separately, UNICEF is also providing support for HIV and TB programmes, and the people who rely on them, in neighbouring countries that do not fall under this Global Fund emergency grant. The war has had a severe impact on health and social service sectors in many of them due to reasons such as large influxes of refugees from Ukraine and economic pressures resulting from uncertainties regarding energy and food prices and access. In these countries as well as Ukraine, UNICEF is using its multisectoral footprint to ensure continuity of services, with the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized at the forefront.