The U.S. Agency for the International Development (USAID) has presented a new five-year project on reinforcement of the control over tuberculosis in Ukraine worth a total of $18 million.

"Today we allocated more $18 million to implement a new project," USAID Mission Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova Jed Barton has reported during the presentation of the project.

"This a new stage of USAID aid to control tuberculosis, in the frames of which we'll improve the quality of services to diagnose and treat tuberculosis using short-term treatment courses, and we'll work on increasing the number of cases of the successful treatment of this disease in Ukraine to the global target of 85%," he said.

According to the project manager Olena Kheylo, the project will be introduced in ten regions of Ukraine: Donetsk region, Kharkiv region, Dnipropetrovsk region, Zaporizhia region, Kherson region, Odesa region, Luhansk region, in Crimea, Kyiv and Sevastopol.

According to her, the project foresees several directions: the implementation of proven practices in TB control and prevention; the creation of the safe conditions for patients and medical staff; the creation of potential to counteract multi resistant TB; improving access to medical diagnostics; and the treatment of HIV-associated tuberculosis.

Kheylo also said that the project would improve the laboratories for TB diagnostics, favor the strict implementation of treatment regimes, and introduce effective treatments for tuberculosis. According to her, the five-year project is aimed at improving the quality of services for TB treatment.