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Interruptions In Supplies Of Medicines For HIV Infection Treatment Take Place In Belarus

Interruptions In Supplies Of Medicines For HIV Infection Treatment Take Place In Belarus
KATSIARYNA PARFIANIUK
PHOTO: ONLINER.BY

Lives of these people are in danger.

Katsiaryna Parfianiuk is a PR expert, a counselor of the Belarusian Public Association “Positive Movement” – a public association that has been dealing with the issues of the HIV infection prevention for 16 years. For the last two years it covers problems faced by the people living with HIV, work of stations for prevention of HIV infection among drug users. He article was published by Onliner.by.

“What will be next?”, “Is it true that there would be no more tablets?”, “So all that is left to do for me is to die, isn’t it?” – these are the few questions received by us from people living with HIV from all parts of the country over the last few months. The heart of a problem is that in recent times it is increasingly difficult to receive medicines necessary for antiretroviral therapy.

Access to antiretroviral therapy is a matter of life and death for people living with HIV. At the moment in Minsk taken alone almost 1,500 persons need such a therapy. If the medication support problem is not solved in the near future, chances of these people to live a long life are to dwindle. HIV infection needs a specific treatment: it means that pills are to be taken every day for the rest of one’s life, and it is preferable to take them in the same time in the course of the day. The treatment suppresses the HIV virus replication. Discontinuation of drug results in high quantity of the virus in blood again, in immunity decrease; risks of associated diseases grow.

In addition to allowing living a full-fledged life to HIV carriers, this treatment also has a great importance for prevention of transmission of infection to other people. In other words, if all people living with HIV undergo treatment regularly and in the right way, theoretically, the HIV will not be transmitted, and there will be no new contamination cases. So it is not just the health of several thousands of Belarusians at the state level.

And now, people do not understand what is going on. Reports are received that pills are given for a term of one week (earlier they were given for two-three months ahead), medicines that had been taken for a long time and which were effective, are replaced by others. According to the reports received by us, some medicines are not available already. Other components in treatment schemes are running to an end. Patients are making assaults upon dispensary offices. For more than half a year HIV carriers have not been able to make medical tests important for them: the immunity status (CD4) and the viral load. The problem is the same: test systems had not been bought in time.

The health agency gives elliptical answers; no exact terms when the drugs are to be received are named. They reassure us and make references to a difficult period. Even a website has appeared on the web, where interruptions with medicines supplies are recorded. It’s a pity that we are losing even the achievements that had been reached by a more than 15 years’ work. For all these years medicines have been bought at the expense of the grant of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and there have been no disruptions in medicines supplies. In the last two years Belarus gradually switched to own supplying of patients with HIV, and it was a very effective process. We rejoiced at this success, everything was fine. And now – there is the first failure.

There are rumours in medical circles that medicines suppliers overprice them, there are issues with the customs service, timely processing of information on the necessary drugs. Everything is analyzed in manual way, there is no computer database. As a result – drugs deliveries to patients are delayed. In other words, the new system of purchase had not been fine-tuned completely.

It should be understood that medicines are given to patients by doctors in dispensary offices. It is impossible to buy them freely in the network of pharmacies. And not all patients can afford these medicines. So in line with the world practice, in Belarus the HIV infection is on the list of diseases which entitle citizens to free supply of drugs.

It is hard to stay objective and try to describe the situation professionally, when my colleague, a person living with the HIV, cannot return to work, as she feels sick because of replacement of the medication. When a woman calls and says that she needs drugs on a first-priority basis, as she had two children. When we are searching a drug addict with HIV around the city, and after finding him persuade him to visit a doctor, and then understand he won’t be able to make tests and probably won’t receive treatment. And it means there is a possibility that he is to become a source of infection.

The problem is obvious, and all services and agencies involved are trying to solve it: to buy and deliver the necessary medications and test systems. Doctors are replacing treatment regimens by the best possible. If the way out is not found at the national level, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria could help again. Everyone understands: if the situation is not stabilized, we could return back to the beginning of the 1990ies, when treatment was unobtainable for Belarusians. It’s a pity that infection disease doctors have to listen to accusations of their patients: complaints against them are written, though they are hostages of the situation as well.

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