Under a new plan beginning in December, the government will supply free drugs to people living with HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh in a major relief.
Officials say they have already bought those ‘expensive’ doses worth over Tk 40 million needed for a year to suppress the virus and stop the progression of the disease to nearly 1,000 HIV positives currently on treatment in Bangladesh.
“The drugs will be made available at five big hospitals initially,” Dr Md Abdul Waheed, Line Director of National AIDS/STD Programme (NASP), told bdnews24.com.
People with HIV/AIDS now get the antiretroviral therapy (ART), a combination of antiretroviral drugs, free under the project of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) which will be exhausted on Nov 30.
The patients receive the drugs from the organisations that work for them. But there are apprehensions that they might not get the free drugs after the project ends.
“We appreciate the move,” said Habiba Akhter, Executive Director of Ashar Alo Society from where around 500 people with HIV/AIDS receive the therapy.
“It would be sustainable now. They (people with HIV) can live worry-free now,” she told bdnews24.com. “Once government started the supply, they will never stop.”
According to NASP, Tk 450 million has been kept in the budget for the ongoing five-year Health, Population and Nutrition Sector Development Programme (HPNSDP) for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.
Akhter, however, said only distributing drugs would not suffice.
“They (people with HIV/AIDS) need additional support like counselling, CD-4 cell counting to see progress and training of family and caregivers so that they can adhere to drugs until death,” Akhter, also an HIV-positive who lives a healthy life with drugs, said.
“The government facilities are not ready for that,” she said and suggested supply of the drugs also to those centres from where they are currently receiving until the government prepares hospitals.
The NASP Line Director also acknowledged it.
“We are planning to supply the drugs to them (organisations from where HIV positives get drugs now) also,” he said, “Process is underway to finalise it.”
“But, when we are fully prepared, we will stop that supply,” he said.
The latest official figures released in last year’s World Aids Day, December 1, put the number of HIV positives at 2,533 and AIDS patients at 1,101 in Bangladesh where 325 died of AIDS since the first case was detected in 1989.
The United Nations AIDS programme (UNAIDS) says more people now than ever are living with the AIDS virus but this is largely due to better access to drugs that keep HIV patients alive and well for many years.
In a report it says the number of people dying of the disease fell to 1.8 million in 2010, down from a peak of 2.2 million in the mid-2000s.
Doctors say the antiretroviral drugs help decrease viral load in patients to non-detectable levels, giving them better immunity against others infections.
They need to take the drugs all their life and it even lowers the chance of transmission.
Studies in Sub-Saharan Africa, an HIV epidemic region, suggest patients may fail to adhere to the medication because of socioeconomic factors.
The Ashar Alo Society’s Executive Director said the drugs cost even Tk 15,000 a month for many which is beyond the means of many middle-class patients.
According to the ninth HIV surveillance 2011 report, HIV prevalence is still less than 1 percent among the high-risk – sex workers, injecting drug users, gays and transgender people – in Bangladesh.
But experts always keep Bangladesh on HIV-alert as it shares a large porous border with India, home to more than 1.5 million people with HIV.
Nurul Islam Hasib
Source : http://bdnews24.com/details.php?cid=13&id=236597