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Officially, there are around 2.1 million HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) affected patients. HIV causes the dreaded acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and AIDS workers believe the reality the number of affected individuals at over 3.2 million.
However, out of the official 2.1 million patients, only an estimated seven lakh people are covered under the Government’s AIDS control programme.
“The problem is that a huge population (of AIDs patients) don’t go to Government centres for treatment due to fear of ostracisation. They seek treatment elsewhere and they need AIDs medicines to be affordable,” said Nochiketa Mohanty, Country Programme Manager (India), AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF). AHF recently wrote to the Prime Minister seeking restoration of guidelines that would allow the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to fix prices medicines for chronic diseases such as AIDS, cancer, heart diseases and others even if they are not in the list of essential medicines.
The Government recently revoked the NPPA guidelines, issued in July, to fix prices of non-essential medicines following protests by pharmaceutical companies.
Procurement“The problem is that the Government procures its AIDS medicines through a process of tenders for which big pharma companies don’t even apply. A ceiling price would have helped the Government procure more medicines, besides giving people who buy medicines from the market better access,” Mohanty said.
According to a source in the Ministry of Health, AIDS patients are currently given medicines for durations of just one-two weeks because of the short supply.
“There is a budget problem and it is being looked into,” the official said.
Another senior official said that out of the 16 AIDS drugs procured by the Government the status of 13 are satisfactory. “A directive has been issued that they (AIDS medicines) can be bought from hospital funds. We are trying to procure some of the medicines that would run out by October 20.”
The official also said that some AIDS medicines may also be added to the list of essential medicines, which is currently under scrutiny by a high-level committee.
The vast difference in pricing of important medicines between different companies makes it difficult for the Government to procure medicines from market.
For example, of the 108 non-essential medicines, the prices of which were capped in July, one was the cholesterol drug simvastatin. Ranbaxy priced the drug at ₹120 a strip, but other companies sold the same for ₹35. “Not just for AIDS but the prices of medicines for all chronic diseases need to be capped in such a situation,” Mohanty of AHF said.
For AIDS patients this could well be a relief as they need to shell out anything between ₹2,500 and ₹8,000 a month on medicines.
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