The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will finance HIV/AIDS tests for 268,000 Ukrainians in 2019, implementing the HealthLink five-year project.

According to a press release of USAID spread during the presentation of the Healthlink project, this project with funding of $22 million is being implemented in 2017-2022 with the participation of Medical center "100% of life" (the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living With HIV (PLWH) in partnership with the Alliance for Public Health. The project is being implemented in the Ukrainian regions with the highest HIV prevalence rates: Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Kherson, Cherkasy, Chernihiv regions and Kyiv City.

In 2017, around 50,000 Ukrainians were tested for HIV/AIDS thanks to the HealthLink project.

This project supports the implementation of systemic changes in the healthcare sector and the development of a new medical protocol for HIV testing.

Director of the Public Health Center of the Health Ministry of Ukraine Volodymyr Kurpita said at the presentation of the HealthLink project, in solving the HIV/AIDS problem at present Ukraine is switching from participation in the projects of international organizations to the designing of the national policy and financing, using budget funds.

"In recent years, Ukraine has made a big step forward from international funding to a national coordinated policy," he said.

Kurpita said that currently the Public Health Center of the Health Ministry together with partners has prepared proposals for the budget of 2019, which provide for the procurement of HIV/AIDS prevention services, using budgetary funds.