An estimated 2.3 million people are living with HIV in the WHO European Region today. The incidence of HIV in eastern Europe is growing, while ART coverage remains particularly low.
Although most HIV patients under modern antiretroviral therapy (ART) respond well to therapy, a minority still experience virological failure or have to change their successful regimen due to drug resistance, toxicity, drug-drug interactions or comorbidity.
Recently, the modern class of antivirals called “integrase strand transfer inhibitors” (InSTI) is being introduced into low/middle-income countries, requiring specific surveillance particularly in eastern Europe, where a specific viral population is present (including the HIV-1 A6 subsubtype).
TB causes 10.4 million new cases globally and is a major public health problem in the WHO European Region.
TB diagnosis is difficult and, more significantly, reliable prognostic markers (i.e. cure, relapse, failure) are missing. Multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) requires long, expensive, often ineffective treatments. Patients from eastern Europe show specifically high rates of second-line MDR-TB.
The size of the HCV-infected population in the eastern region of Europe is around 14 million, and in combination with excessive alcohol consumption is a major cause of excess morbidity and mortality.
With the availability of direct acting oral anti-HCV drugs (DAA), communitywide eradication of HCV appears possible, but to define an optimal treatment strategy under public health perspective is necessary.
CARE activities will define tools, paradigms and interventions aiming at improving clinical care and treatment outcomes and reducing the burden of the three diseases in the short, medium and long term, with a specific focus on the European Region and the Russian Federation (Fig. 1).
CARE aimed at generating novel research findings with potential short term application as well as to implement the research infrastructure to allow the expansion of activities beyond the funding frame.
