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Thirty-four-year-old Ratan Singha, an Aids patient, wanted to live. He borrowed heavily from family and friends and dipped into his meagre savings to fund his second-line therapy of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) drugs. |
But Singha, who was an alcoholic and a drug addict, was compelled to buy the medicines from the open market as they were not available at his local government centre in Manipur.
Unable to afford the high cost of the drugs, Singha soon lost his battle with the disease.
Delhi-based Rahul started using ART drugs in 2006 after he was detected with HIV. Since he didn’t get proper counselling and support, he stopped going to the ART centre. His health deteriorated and now he is on second line ART.
The reason was simple: he was given incomplete dosages due to shortage of ART.
Little Keerthiga’s is the same story.
The five-year-old from Tiruchi was born HIV positive and needed regular ART treatment. However, due to the non-availability of ART drugs, her mother, a labourer, had to take her to a Chennai ART centre every month, which she discontinued after it ran out of stocks.
The three cases are unrelated, but point to a grim picture about the acute shortage the country faces of ART drugs.
According to experts and NGOs, the situation is going from bad to worse. Though there are no figures on how many people with HIV/Aids are dying due to shortage of crucial drugs, experts feel it is steadily rising.
According to UNAids, India had the third largest number of people in the world living with HIV at the end of 2013, accounting for about four out of every 10 people living with HIV in the Asian region.
According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report last year, the Indian government has been providing free anti-retroviral drugs for treating HIV since 2004, but only 50% of those eligible were getting it in 2012.
According to the health ministry 140,000 people died in India because of Aids in 2012.
In February, the health ministry had said that according to surveillance data, 2.09mn people are estimated to be living with HIV (PLHIV) in the country. A total of 747,175 PLHIV are receiving free first line anti-retroviral treatment and 7,224 PLHIV are receiving free second line drugs.
