Thousands of HIV Positive patients in Chhattisgarh have been facing a ticklish situation as key medicines crucial for their survival are unavailable in the state for more than a month now.
It is essential for the HIV Positive persons that they consume the lifelong prescribed medicines at a specific time everyday without even a slight delay. But it is appalling that around 7,000 patients, including both children and adults, are in a life threatening condition because of the unavailability of medicines.
“The last batch of my medicines finished on January 14. I have done rounds of government hospitals since then but the doctors tell me they have run out of stock,” said a 38-year-old HIV patient from Rajnandgaon district. He has been running a high fever and suffering from loose motions since a fortnight. “I live alone and my condition has deteriorated so much that I cannot even go to collect the medicines now,” he said.
The adult HIV patients are required to consume a combination of three tablets once a day while the children need the dose twice a day. These medicines are ordered by National AIDS Control Organisation and are not available with private hospitals or drug stores.
In Durg district, the HIV patients have complained that the doctors are providing them only two out of three tablets. When contacted, Deputy Director of the State AIDS Control Society (SACS) Vikrant Verma said he has no such information of scarcity of HIV drugs in the state.
Refuting the claims of the patients, Store Officer of SACS Vijay Shyam Thakur said the state had not received the drugs from the national coordinator of National AIDS Control Organisation which resulted in scarcity of the drugs.
“We are dependent on the Central authority and cannot provide the medicines until we receive it from Delhi. A batch of drugs has come to our state office and the problem is taken care of,” Verma told The Pioneer.
However, the patients disagree with the officer’s statement and claim that the drugs are still not available.
“Health of my seven-year-old son is worsening as I cannot find the medicine for nearly 20 days now. If the state government cannot provide us such a vital drug, it must get it from other neighbouring States,” said a resident of Vaishali Nagar, Durg who too is a HIV patient.
“HIV patients cannot delay their daily doses of medicines even by 15 minutes but because of insensitivity of the SACS the patients all over the state are suffering,” said K Mukesh of Chhattisgarh Network of People living with HIV/ AIDS in a press conference in the city on Monday.
He said that he said requested to various officers of national and state level, including Human Rights Commission, but in vain. Mukesh said that if the medicines are not made available in all the districts soon, he will immolate himself in public. Chhattisgarh is the only state where number of HIV patients is increasing in the low-risk population, he said.