If you want to know why Ukraine had a revolution, consider this: it has one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics, and yet officials deliberately overcharged their own health ministry for anti-retrovirals to make money for themselves. In 2013, about a quarter of the money intended for HIV medicines was embezzled, while more than half the Ukrainians who died of Aids-related conditions lacked access to drugs.
And that was not an isolated example: children lacked vaccines, haemophiliacs lacked clotting factor, diabetics lacked insulin. Patients had to bribe doctors to obtain the drugs the state was supposed to provide for free, while officials and intermediaries secretly got rich via Cyprus-registered shell companies.
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