USAID Mission Director Christopher Crowley: Ukraine Has One of the Fastest Growing Rates of Infection in the World at this Time

But there is still time to bring the epidemic backward. FACTY asked Mission Director Christopher Crowley, who has been working in Ukraine for the last 6 years and plans to return to his home country in the near future, to tell more about the Agency activity. A: The main areas of the USAID assistance to Ukraine can be divided to three broad areas.   The first major area is economic growth.  In that area you will find our assistance to small and medium enterprises, to agriculture, to the banking system.  The majority of USAID assistance since 1992 went to this sector. The second major area of USAID assistance is democracy and local governance.  Here we provide support to media development, and the rule of law and political party development.   The third broad area of our support is health and social transition.  In this area you will find our support to programs that fight HIV/AIDS, TB, support to Mother and Child care, and also our programs which combat trafficking in human beings.  This comes is second as far level of assistance is concerned. A: We respond to requests from the Government of Ukraine and from private organizations to provide assistance in number of different approaches.  This assistance may simply be described as providing advice to those officials who are concerted with the programs.  The component of our program includes a large amount of training.  In some cases we provide small amounts of equipment to support the program.  When we are working with non-governmental organizations, these organizations ay receive grants to conduct their activities.  This is very rare thing, except when we are working with non-governmental organizations, we give money directly.   A: In the earlier years of USAID assistance, to quite a large extant we focused on development of partnership relationships between U.S.  and Ukraine health care institutions.  Our health program today concentrates primarily on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.  With the Global Fund to fight AIDS and with other donors we can have a broad attack on the causes of this disease.  Our primary programs relate to the prevention of disease as opposed to treatment.  And our primary geographical area concentration is on eight oblasts from the east down to the south of Ukraine where the disease is the most problematic.  And with those non-governmental and governmental organizations that are involved in the prevention, we also work in the attempt to reduce the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS.  There is very little understanding of what causes HIV/AIDS in Ukraine.  As a result we see stigma and discrimination against these people who have HIV/AIDS.  Children are prevented from going to school, adults are not hired. A: Some countries in the world have had much earlier experience with the development of this disease, and it is a relatively recent phenomenon but rapidly growing one in Ukraine.  Ukraine has one of the fastest growing rates of infection in the world at this time.  The government has made a strong commitment to dealing with the impact of this disease in Ukraine and is taking a very active role in it.  I think I would say Ukraine is doing pretty good in comparison to the other country of the former Soviet Union in drawing attention to the serious problems.  We have only just begun infighting it.  And greater commitment on everybody’s behalf is going to be required to turn around the current trajectory of this disease.  Ukraine still has time to accomplish this task unlike countries in some other continents where the economies have been so devastated because of HIV/AIDS.  There is no time to delay: the effort must be strong and quick. A: USAID program to combat trafficking in human being is implemented by the International Organization for Migration.  This program consists of trying to address this problem in several directions.  First of all, we try to prevent the trafficking from taking place.  And if you support the idea that women in particularly, but problem is not just among the victims, just the majority at this point; if you support the idea that people become vulnerable to this kind of trafficking because of poverty and because they don’t work or jobs, or because there is domestic violence and abuse, then you have to start dealing with some root causes that cause this problem.  One of ways to prevent them from trafficking is to provide them with employment training that would help them find a job.  Then of course there is a situation in which you have victims – people who have been trafficked and found themselves in slavery in some of the countries they’ve been trafficked.  Once individuals are discovered to be in this kind of a situation in some country, IOM works to release them from the situation they found themselves and return to Ukraine.  Then they do come back, primarily the women have severely physiological and social issues they have to deal with.  We support shelter, which are places where a trafficked person can go to receive this kind of assistance.   A: First of all, where they are is kept in secret to keep the traffickers from getting to victims, from threatening and blackmailing.