People living with HIV are not happy with the government when it comes to treatment and detection of new cases. A representative of their network, Habiba Akhter, said five out of eight blood samples testing machines for HIV lay idle in as many hospitals as the government did not appoint technicians and supply testing reagents regularly.She also said at the World AIDS Day inauguration function, where National AIDS/STD Programme officials were present on Sunday, that the government had not taken steps to increase the number of voluntary testing and counselling centres across Bangladesh, although the need for them was proven globally.
She raised the issue when officials said they were all set to start “one-stop” service at five government hospitals from Jan where free ‘antiretroviral’ drugs would also be supplied.
“We think those hospitals are not well-prepared,” Akhter said in response to their remark.
“The (hospital’s) infrastructure is yet to be developed to offer services (to people with HIV). Doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers are not trained enough. The hospital environment is not conducive to the HIV positives,” she said.
“It is very difficult to keep people with HIV on drugs for long. The new government centres will even discourage them,” she said.
Currently, people with HIV receive free drugs supplied by the government through different rehabilitation centres.
However, Line Director of the government’s AIDS/STD Programme Dr Md Abdul Waheed said the infrastructure would be developed at the Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Khulna and Rajshahi medical college hospitals before launching the service.
He acknowledged that the testing machines for HIV – known as “CD4 Cells” counting machine – lay idle and argued that: “We don’t get many people for testing. The testing reagents expire”.
The CD4 cells counting machine helps in the testing of HIV/AIDS blood samples, determine the stage of the infection, guide anti-retroviral drug choices as well as indicate the patients’ response to treatment and disease progression.
Waheed said “even reagents expire in functioning machines”.
He, however, said the government would also involve NGOs in hospital services so that “they get proper service”.
Habiba Akhter told bdnews24.com that people with HIV fear status would get disclosed in hospitals. “There are many examples. So we have to train and make healthcare providers aware first”.
With stigma attached to the disease, UN reports indicate that Bangladesh was unable to detect as many cases as it should because people refused to undergo tests.
The latest government figure released on Sunday put the number of people living with HIV at 3,241 in Bangladesh since the first case was detected in 1,989. AIDS patients numbered 1,299 and 472 people died of AIDS.
However, UN estimates the number to be between 8,000 and 16,000, which means many are left undetected and untreated.
The UNAIDS Country Coordinator in Dhaka, Leo Kenny, told bdnews24.com Bangladesh needed to ponder “very seriously” how to detect more HIV cases.
Of many ways, he said: “One is to make available voluntary testing and counselling centres and another way is to integrate this into the existing maternal, child and sexual reproductive health services so that tests can be done anywhere, in any health facility”. – bdnews24.com
