In 2011 the Ministry of Health did not make one purchase of medicines and all 240 tenders ended without any result. Whether, as Dzerkalo Tyzhnya suggests, the causes are not merely incompetence, or not, there is a grave lack of medicines in the country and no sign of real measures to deal with this

The partnership “For Honest Public Procurement in Ukraine” has published an open appeal to the President over the failure by the Health Ministry to run vitally needed tenders for medication and consequent grave risk to large numbers of people with very serious illnesses

Chronic underfunding and a situation where tenders for medicine are held late are leading to an increase in multi-resistant forms of tuberculosis. At present some regions are running out of medication, others also have a shortfall

The Kharkiv authorities have closed the only clinic in the village settlement of Borhy which had inpatient facilities. There is one GP for 5,400 people and a 4-6 hour journey by public transport to the nearest hospital

The Leader of the opposition BYuT Party, former Presidential candidate and Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko has been detained in Kyiv. This was on the basis of a court order from the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv “in order to carry out investigation activities”.

Victims of the Chernobyl Disaster have become much more active at standing up for their rights in court. However they have to wait years for enforcement of the court rulings

Twenty five years ago, on 26 April 1986, the powerful explosion that tore through Chornobyl’s nuclear power plant spewed radioactive material across large swathes of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

Ex-Soviet governments are failing to protect their people from the deadly legacy of the Chernobyl disaster, former cleanup workers and environmental groups charged Monday on the eve of ceremonies commemorating the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident

The newly created State Drug Control Service may, in breach of present legislation, receive powers reserved for law enforcement bodies which will render meaningless any positive changes in State drug policy

Ukraine retains the old Soviet system with funding calculated per patient bed. How many patients are taken per year, what kind of quality of health care they receive is not the issue

Holding 70-year-old Anatoly Temchenko who is in very poor health in a SIZO [pre-trial detention centre] cannot be described as anything less than torture, human rights activist, Andriy Didenko says

Victoria Shcherbyna lost her baby and will never walk again after an accident caused by a public official who was speeding. He got off without serving a prison sentence and has never paid any compensation, while she is forced to exist on a pittance

Human Rights Watch has written to President Yanukovych expressing its concern over ongoing harassment by state prosecutors and law enforcement targeting substance abuse treatment patients, care providers, and HIV organizations

The instruction sent out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on obtaining information about people receiving replacement therapy is in serious breach of the Ukrainian Constitution and legislation

Andrei Bondarenko has no record of mental illness and has undergone three voluntary psychiatric examinations to assess his mental health, the most recent of which was in October 2010

TORO, Transparency International’s National Contact in Ukraine, has strongly condemned the approach of the law enforcement bodies in their “planned” inspection of the All-Ukrainian Network of PLWH

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine and the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV have issued an open appeal to the President over measures which are disrupting efforts to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic, violating patients’ rights and seriously undermining the country’s reputation in the world

43-year-old patient of the Novosavytsky Psychiatric Home, Yury Vovchenko, died during the night of 11 August, . He was buried, on the instructions of the orderlies, before morning, but the body was then exhumed

According to Tetyana Yablonska from the Ukrainian-American Human Rights Bureau, the Ukrainian psychiatric system remains punitive as in Soviet times. People continue being injected with prohibited medication. There are also people who could cope outside special institutions

The entire allocation under “Measures for overcoming the tuberculosis and AIDS epidemics” comes to around 150 thousand UAH. That is, 19 million spent on treatment of VIP patients is 127 annual budgets for treating tuberculosis