India to supply cheaper second line HIV drugs

Indian Government has taken a decision to supply cheaper drugs for treatment of HIV /AIDS which will help in controlling the fast spreading AIDS. It would be made available from January next year.

The main problem in prevention of the mother to child transmission of HIV infection is the lack of direct delivery top the institutions. Though the number of such infections is still low, controlling it depends on institutional deliveries since the treatment is available only at these health centers.

Under the National programme for AIDS control, the drugs which cost 12 times more than the older medicines, will be handed out once India has treated 100,000 AIDS patients with the cheaper drugs, the official said.

“As soon as we are able to provide Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) to 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the country, we will introduce second-line drugs," National AIDS Control Organization Director General Sujatha Rao said.

Distribution of generic drugs for AIDS started in 2004 through National Health System and according to the official figures 55,473 people were treated through this program by December 2006.

In India there are between 50,000 to 1 lakh HIV-infected children, of whom 43,000 are under the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART). Ms.Rao said India will acquire six more PCR machines to test the infants for the HIV infection. At present India has just one such machine which can only test the infants 18 months old. India has also taken the lead in drafting guidelines for treating HIV positive children and these are now being circulated all over the world.

It is a conscious decision to provide the first line treatment to the infected people as it is easier and cheaper in comparison to the second line treatment which is expensive and needs more initial investment, she said at the launch of the WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF joint report on the latest AIDS treatment figures and the health sector's response to the HIV epidemic.

Ms. Rao said three to four per cent of people who take ART drugs could develop resistance to the first-line drugs in four to five years time and once we decide to provide these, we will get the money from international donors.

According to her some high-HIV prevalence States such as Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh had done exceedingly well in checking the disease due to the high percentage of direct delivery to the health centers and this percentage of direct delivery is expected to touch the 100 per cent mark in the coming two years.

To improve this, Government will now introduce a `voucher system' wherein a pregnant woman could go to a private hospital for delivery and the cost would be paid by the Government. Under the National Aids Control Programme (NACP-III), high risk areas will be the main focus which constitute of around 186 districts.

Citing the example of Botswana and Brazil who are providing second-line drugs, she said the two countries have put huge amount of their budget money on distributing second-line drugs. "Forty per cent of Brazil's budget is spent on procuring second-line drugs in spite of the fact that the number of infected persons in INDIA is far more than these countries."