30 November,2010 08:00 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
Patients requiring advanced treatment have to go as far as Mumbai to get treated as government hospitals in city lack facilities for second line of anti-retroviral therapy
Government hospitals in the city still do not offer the second line of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to patients, an unhappy fact that will again be rubbed in as another World AIDS Day dawns tomorrow. The city has the second highest HIV-AIDS patient load in the state.
ART is a combination of highly advanced drugs meant to fight HIV infection and increase life expectancy of HIV-AIDS patients. In the absence of this treatment, chances of survival are low.
The total number of HIV-AIDS cases in the city is 17,258.
Of the total 22,147 HIV-infected people registered at the Sassoon General Hospital only about 6,423 are being treated. The treatment provided at the ART centre that treats HIV-infected at Sassoon hospital is not the best.
Doctors said drugs are started only after a patient's CD-4 or immunity levels fall to such an extent that he requires life-saving drugs.
However, many patients have stopped responding to the drugs that are being given to them and need alternative or advanced therapy. However, this second line ART is not available in government hospitals in the city and patients travel all the way to Mumbai's JJ hospital to get these life-saving drugs.
Sassoon hospital was to get a second line ART, but the promise has remained merely on paper.
Doctors at the hospital said that starting second line ART was imperative to make sure patients continue therapy.
"About 800 patients have dropped out of treatment so far. Some of them go to private hospitals but not all can afford it, in fact very few. Most try out alternative therapies or go to quacks, which claim miracle cures. Some travel to JJ hospital for drugs but for how long will they do that? We just hope second line ART is made available quickly to make sure patients don't lose hope and give up medication," said a doctor requesting anonymity.
Dr D B Kadam, head of the medicine department and ART centre said that even though the hospital handles lot of AIDS patients, it has no separate centre to treat paediatric patients. It also does not have advanced drugs for those who have developed resistance to first line ART.
"There must be hundreds of patients travelling to JJ hospital to get the second line drugs. We are training our staffers for the second line ART but we are yet to get the requisite drugs. We have a meeting next week with officials of National AIDS Control Organisation, Delhi. We will then know when we can get the drugs," said Kadam.
Dr Arun Jamkar, dean of Sassoon hospital, said there was a proposal to build a bigger ART complex with a separate unit for paediatric HIV patients. "About 341 boys and 223 girls below 15 years are on ART treatment at the hospital but they are being treated with the adult HIV patients," said Jamkar.
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"If we have a separate unit and set-up like psychologists, peer groups among others for paediatric HIV cases, then it would make a lot of difference," said another doctor.
