No room for HIV-affected in govt hospitals

Since NACO stopped funding Community Care Centers, AIDS patients are counting their days in several districts in the State

Sangareddy: Two years after the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) decided to stop funding Community Care Centers (CCCs) offering treatment to HIV/AIDs patients, the situation has turned from bad to worse.

With many CCCs being shut down, the affected people have been dying, whose lives could have otherwise been prolonged if proper care and support was given. The NACO’s decision was taken with a noble idea of offering treatment to HIV/AIDS patients with other patients at government hospitals instead of treating them separately.

However, due to the social stigma and fear associated with AIDS, the government hospitals in districts have not been admitting HIV patients. They are referring them to bigger hospitals in cities instead. Hospitals are not even admitting delivery cases involving HIV patients.

M Srinivas, from Siddipet, has been battling HIV since 1997. His wife died with AIDS 10 years ago and his younger son has also been inherited with the virus. Recently, when he suffered from fever and motions, he had gone to Siddipet Government Hospital, where he was refused treatment.

“The doctors didn’t even give me glucose,” he says. He is currently getting treatment at Asha Jyothi, a care and support center for HIV/AIDS patients. Even the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) centres located at hospitals don’t have doctors exclusively to treat HIV/AIDS patients and there are no separate beds available to treat the patients.

Asha Jyothi, located at Pragnapur, is the only organisation in Medak district which is currently serving the needs of HIV/AIDS patients from six districts. Three of the CCCs previously operational were closed down after the NACO decision.

“With much difficulty, patients reach the area hospitals from their villages. Then they are tossed between hospitals and departments. This is wrong,” said Father Alwin Mascarenhas, Director, Asha Jyothi. There are 12,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers across Medak District. The unofficial count puts it at 16,000. Out of them, 7,000 are getting ART medication. 516 of them are children.

The ART medicine users are supposed to get Rs 1,000 as pension every month. But only 2,000 out of 7,000 people are receiving pensions. There was previously a scheme named Antyodaya, where patients used to get 35 kilos rice. This scheme has been revoked after the formation of Telangana.

Previously Andhra Pradesh State Aids Control Society (APSACS) used to oversee the welfare of HIV/AIDS sufferers in the combined State. However, even after a year after AP has been bifurcated, Telangana State Aids Control Society (TSACS) has not been fully operational.

This has affected the availability of ART medicines in Telangana in the past couple of months, where patients were being turned away from ART centres due to non-availability of medicines.

Father Alwin opined that the government schemes for the affected needed to be implemented first, confidentiality had to be maintained with respect to the infected people and proper treatment needed to be given at their own Primary Health Centre.

He added that if the Centre had decided to stop funding the CCCs, the State government could still support organisations offering care and support to the affected and that they could also directly run CCCs.

By Vivek Bhoomi