26 May,2011 10:47 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
There is some good news for the 10,000-odd people living with HIV who are undergoing treatment at the anti-retroviral treatment centre in the city. After a wait of many long years that also saw many deaths because of non-availability of medication, second-line drugs to treat HIV will finally be available in the city.
Sassoon General Hospital is the regional centre for the treatment of people living with HIV. The ART centre at Sassoon was started in 2005, after which 23,000 people registered themselves. Many of these people are healthy, as calculated by their CD4 count, and only 10,000 of these are on treatment. About 700 of these are children. So far only the first-line ART drugs were available in the city.
No need to go to JJ
"When a patient is on first-line drugs for a long time, he might develop resistance towards these and theyu00a0 might no longer work. Then we need to switch to second-line ART drugs, but these are available at an exorbitant cost in the private sector. In government hospitals, the second-line treatment was available only in Mumbai's JJ Hospital," said Dr D B Kadam, head of ART centre, Sassoon hospital. In the absence of drugs, patients either drop out of treatment or try to tap other resources.
At last count, about 4,500 patients registered at Sassoon General Hospital had died; many lives could have been saved by a proper drug regimen, if followed. Even among those who are referred to JJ Hospital, not all receive treatment. "Around 250 people from Pune had been sent to JJ Hospital for the second-line drugs and 45 persons were given the treatment," said Kadam.
At four centres
Once the drugs are made available in the city, those who fail to respond to the first-line of treatment do not have to rely on JJ hospital for further treatment. Towards mid-June, the drugs will become available across four different centres, namely Sassoon hospital, Pimpri's YCM Hospital, Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) and National AIDS Research Institute (NARI).
