HIV/AIDS: 2nd line of treatment too costly, no Govt policy yet

Kumar’s case is peculiar as the anti-retrovirals provided by the Government don’t work for him and his doctors have put him on a higher level of drugs (second line of treatment), for which he has to pay from his own pocket. These include improved drugs like Tenofavir and Abacavir.

“I have two options — to live and pay huge amounts every month or just prepare to die,’’ said Kumar. “With the high cost of these drugs I don’t know how long can I afford to live anyway,’’ he added.

He is not the only one. At 10 am today, Kumar along with 20 people from across the country, began a protest sit-in at Jantar Mantar to get their voice to the authorities concerned. They will continue their protests till the morning of December 1 — World AIDS Day — when another 300 will join them.

Though the Government has provided medicines for about 96,000 patients as against 47,000 under treatment with the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), these are only the basic first line of medication.

Under the Government’s policy the new improved drugs are not available in Government hospitals and patients who have developed resistance to the first line of treatment have to buy them on their own. “Our main effort is to provide the basic treatment for millions of HIV positive people. The second line of treatment is very expensive and we cannot afford to provide it free at this point,’’ said Sujatha Rao, director-general NACO.

Before changing the treatment protocol, NACO is planning a drug resistance study in four centres. The study to be conducted by NARI (PUNE), Tuberculosis Research Centre, Chennai, NICD Kolkata and AIIMS in Delhi is likely to be started early next year.