New Delhi: AIDS, once a dreaded disease that seemed unstoppable in India has, thanks to increased government funding and public awareness, shown signs of stabilising in its spread.
Free counselling, testing and treatment has helped India lower new infections to 80,000 a year, which have stabilised HIV numbers at 21.17 lakh people, shows the UNAIDS Report and the NACO Annual report of 2016.
Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have the most cases of AIDS with 3.95 lakh people infected with the disease. Delhi has a much lower number but is estimated to have 0.25% of its population infected with the disease.
The quality of treatment varies widely across government hospitals even in the same city, with those with the National AIDS Control Organisation’s (NACO) integrated counselling and testing centres (ICTC) usually better equipped.
Medical professionals in the city say that with improved funding and more patients, the treatment of HIV positive patients at both government and private treatment clinics are seeing greater success in control of the disease.
Current medical status in AIDS control
According to Rachel Dutt, a nurse at a private hospital in New Delhi, patients usually come for other medical reasons and after due process of consent in blood tests, discover that they are HIV positive.
“Hospitals first assess on the basis of the symptoms of the patient if they could have AIDS or not and then ask them for consent to undergo blood tests for AIDS. In case of a minor, their guardians are asked for permission,” she says. Approximately 720 cases were discovered this way to be HIV positive in 2017 at a single hospital alone.
Once they discover that they are HIV positive, the process of treatment is focussed on the containment of the spread of HIV within the body using Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) drugs.
The stabilisation of the patients can take anywhere between 7 weeks to three months based on how soon their diagnosis was made. Patients with more advanced conditions have greater difficulty in responding to medication.
“Patients who have been suffering from AIDS for a long time are more prone to side effects such as fever, vomiting, etc which makes treatment by ART considerably more difficult,” says Rachel.
Social and Legal consequences
Apart from the complications caused by the disease, patients fight the social stigma and rejection that invariably comes once their friends, family and acquaintances come to know that they have AIDS.
In April this year, the Parliament passed the HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2017, that guarantees equal rights in medical treatment, admission to educational institutions and jobs to people living with HIV/AIDS, but the Act is yet to be notified.
Just last month, doctors in Tikamgarh district refused to treat a pregnant woman who was HIV positive when the confidential pathology report was leaked by the lab technician. She finally delivered twins, who died within 30 minutes of birth, unattended on the ward floor.
If an HIV positive patient is refused treatment at a government health facility, then the patient can move court, but the same doesn’t hold true for private hospitals till the Act is notified.
There is a general feeling in the community that instead of mass media campaigns, what is needed along with changes in the law is an intensive sensitisation campaign among health professionals in government hospitals.
