300 people living with HIV to march for their rights in Mumbai

More than 300 people living with HIV in Mumbai will be marching from Churchgate station to Azad Maidan on the occasion of International Human Rights Day to highlight unmet needs in the current National Aids Control Programme.

According to activists and the HIV+, the problems include delayed funding to community-based organisations (CBOs) to implement prevention programmes, disrupted supply of needles, syringes and condoms, unavailability of gold standard test, like routine viral load for treatment, monitoring and shortage of HIV medicines and tools in Maharashtra.

“This year, till now, most organisations have just received grants for only two months since April because of the change in routing of funds from the Centre to the state treasury instead of the State Aids Control Society. The delays in disbursing the funds has affected the targeted intervention programmes in the last two years,” said Eldred Tellis, spokesperson of Mumbai Aids Forum and director of Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust.

The CBOs have time and again expressed concern about the situation as failing to provide funds and other resources might increase the number of new cases, particularly among the young.

“Last year on World Aids Day, we had organised the march highlighting the “high levels” of stock-outs and shortages of HIV medicines and tools in Maharashtra. Nothing has changed... Even this year we came across several incidents of shortage in medicines and kits and delay in switching to second line medicines,” said Ramesh Bhandari, spokesperson for HIV+ support group.

Mumbai alone has over 50,000 people living with HIV, who depend on these government-run centres for their antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, the regular shortage is either forcing them to return frequently, is interrupting their treatment or pushing them to buy from the private market at much higher prices.

As far as the treatment is concerned, second line ART is only available at JJ hospital. CBOs demand the decentralisation of second line antiretrovirals to make the treatment accessible to more. People living with HIV need a baseline Viral Load, a tool essential for identifying those who are failing treatment and need to be switched to different drugs.

Tellis informed that an RTI application filed in June revealed that not a single viral load test was done from July 2014 to February 2015 due to non-availability of kits. In April 2015, again there were no kits available for conducting the test and the next month only one kit was available.

“The current apathy of the Centre and the state with regard to health represents a major threat to the right to health of the HIV+. This is the reason we are marching on International Human Rights Day,” said Dr Anitha Chettiar, resident project officer at Eduljee Framjee Allbless Niramay Niketan.

Officials from Maharashtra State Aids Control Society and Mumbai Districts Aids Control Society accept that funds are a problem but add that they are in the process of streamlining everything and have spoken to the higher-ups.