Maharashtra: State sees major drop in HIV patients who ditch treatment midway

Even though Maharashtra is on the list of top five states in terms of patients abandoning HIV treatment midway there has been an 83 per cent decline in such cases in the state between 201718 and 20212022According to health officials counselling and the availability of drugs that have fewer side effects are reasons behind the decrease in figuresldquoA decade ago people living with HIV used to leave treatment midway due to the side effects of drugs Many of them complain about suicidal tendencies bad dreams and other issues But now new drugs are available that have no or very minor side effects The health authorities are also doing well in terms of tracking and counselling However few people do not adhere to treatment and the only thing we can do is make them understandrdquo said Dr Ishwar Gilada president AIDS Society of India ASI and governing council member International AIDS Society IASAccording to data obtained by advocate Tushar Bhosale via RTI the majority of people living with HIV are continuing their treatmentAlso Read Chahal questioned by ED over lsquoirregularitiesrsquo at COVID centresIn 201718 the number of people living with HIV who abandoned treatment midway was 1012 The figure was 171 in 20212022 while from April to October last year 103 patients opted to stop treatment midway in MaharashtraA senior official from the Maharashtra State Aids Control Society MSACS said on the condition of anonymity ldquoIn 2010 the percentage of those would not follow up was around 16 per cent but it has come down to 2 per cent There was no unique identity for the patients so they used to register themselves in many ART antiretroviral therapy centres under other names However their contact number was the same So there was a duplication issue We started a deduplication activity to find out the real number of dropout patients This helped us a lot The numbers have gone down So we also started holding followup drives every week We see what are the number of patients who did not come for a followup We have a network through which the next day we call those who failed to comerdquoMembers of NGOs working with us visit homes to understand why patients are not coming and counsel them The side effects of the drugs have also diminished We have also started providing three monthsrsquo worth of medicine to patients who have good CD4 counts and no other health issues If someone is shifting from Maharashtra to another state we transfer them to their nearest ART centre so that it is convenient for themrdquoTelangana tops the aforementioned list of five states with 464 cases in 20212022