45-year-old Ashish Patil (name changed) travels all the way from Nashik to Mumbai once a week to collect his anti-HIV medication from state-run JJ Hospital. Ideally, Patil should have gotten a month's quota of medication from the anti-retroviral therapy (ART) centre in JJ Hospital. But that is not the case. Delay in drug supply from the central government has given rise to a perennial shortage of drugs for 1,78,000 patients that seek anti-HIV treatment in Maharashtra .
This year, Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society (MSACS) has lost count of nearly 3,560 patients who were seeking treatment with public hospitals. "Up to two percent of the patients seeking treatment have failed to follow up. Either they have died or discontinued treatment. Patients find it extremely difficult to travel far for treatment and so they discontinue taking their medicines," said a senior MSACS official.
The number of patients who dropped out of treatment, according to MSACS, has increased from 0.5 percent in the previous year to two percent this year. "While only 890 patients were untraceable last year, this number has increased to 3,560 patients this year, which indicates that the reach-out programmes are going down the drain," said the official.
For the past two years, Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society (MSACS) has been struggling to get free bus passes for its HIV patients. Considering that the patients find it expensive to travel via bus or train to ART centres, MSACS had sent a proposal to the state transport department to provide free bus passes in the state bus transport service to HIV patients.
In Himachal Pradesh, free bus passes are provided to HIV-affected patients. In Rajasthan, up to 75% discount is provided to patients.
"On similar lines, we will aggressively follow up with the transport department to provide free bus passes," said Khushalsinh Pardeshi, project director, MSACS.
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