Andhra Pradesh: Agonizing wait for ARV drugs

[Guest guest]

Agonizing wait for ARV drugs

The Indian Express

February 23, 2006

--------------------

For more than 50,000 AIDS patients in the State [Andhra Pradesh] who are in need

of the life saving anti-retroviral drugs (ARV), the painful wait seems endless.

The Delhi-based National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) couldn’t fulfill it’s

promise of supplying ARV drugs to 50% of those who need it to stay alive.

The 3by5 initiative – a free ARV roll-out programme could meet the drug

requirement of just about 4,000 HIV+ people in the state. Further the number of

centres where ARV drugs are disbursed are limited to four, instead of the

promised nine in the state.

The drugs are given to HIV+ people who are in stage III and IV of AIDS. The

dosage of ARV drugs costs about Rs 1500 a month. It is of great help to boost

one’s immunity who otherwise become more prone to opportunistic infections like

those of TB. HIV+ people living in poorer parts of India often have no access to

clean water and sanitation, have malnutrition and already weak health status,

and are susceptible to a variety of infectious diseases. This places them at

greater risk of HIV-associated OIs and is believed to significantly shorten the

interval between initial HIV infection and the onset of AIDS-related conditions.

AIDS-Care-Watch campaign members in the State, claim that government is not

doing enough to keep HIV+ people alive.

Talking to Indian Express, Sukumar of Indian Network of NGOs on AIDS

(INN), said NACO could supply ARV drugs to 15,000 people only against 7.1 lakh

[710,000] HIV+ people who needed these drugs across the country. The second

generation of ARV drugs is not available in the country yet.

When contacted, the AP AIDS Control Society (APSACS) officials said “There was a

mad rush at our ARV outlets. So we have started supplying the drugs only to

those who are in dire need of them. In a normal patient, the CD4 (a measure to

check one’s resistance) is 800. We are supplying ARV drugs only to those whose

CD4 is 200”. The ARV drugs are available at the outlets at Osmania General

Hospital, Government Chest Hospital at Erragadda, Government General Hospital at

Guntur and King ’s Hospital at Vishakhapatnam.

“We did not promise to supply ARV drugs to all patients. NACO promised to cover

one lakh [100,000] patients in the country under it’s AIDS control programme.

But it is not time bound” the official said.