Indias leading pharmaceutical companies that export AIDS drugs to Africa will soon have to cater to the domestic market as well with the deadly virus making inroads across the country.
According to government-released statistics, India is home to more AIDS patients than the population of several countries in the world. There are more than 5,1 million patients across India suffering from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
While India has set up a national AIDS control organization to put a lid on the virus, New Delhi has found a true friend in former US President Bill Clinton who is spearheading a war against AIDS across the country.
Clinton pledged last week that his foundation would help train 150.000 doctors along with Indias National AIDS Control Organization to quickly spread anti-HIV/AIDS drugs among the huge countrys patients.
– We need these trained doctors so that we can quickly spread drugs to all the people, Clinton, on a three-day visit to India to push tsunami relief and spread the anti-AIDS message, said in New Delhi.
– Without trained doctors, we cannot give the drugs to the people because not everyone needs the same dosage of medicines. The biochemistry is different with different people. If we do not have trained doctors, patients could be taking the drugs and still dying, Clinton said.
– AIDS is a 100 percent preventable disease … yet 8.000 people die every day, he said adding that AIDS was no longer restricted to African countries and was now fast spreading to countries of former Soviet Union, Caribbean, India and China.
The William J. Clinton Foundation has promised to help India train more than 700.000 Indian doctors in the next few years. – The urgency and importance of the situation cannot be overstated. Every day you delay means someone dies who does not need to die, the former president said.
Clinton said: – You have the drugs, a great government initiative and no one has the number of patients that you do. You can set an example. You can change the situation like this.
The U.K. Department for International Development (det britiske Danida) is supporting the physician training initiative.
– In India, where an estimated 80 percent of healthcare services are provided by private sector hospitals and private physicians, it is imperative that they are given tools needed to provide standardized high quality care and treatment to those who need it, Clinton said.
Clinton is on his fourth visit to India during the past five years including his official visit as the US president. His recent visit also took him to southern India as UN envoy to push tsunami relief efforts in the coastal areas.
Indias federal health ministry has claimed a sharp decline in the number of AIDS patients. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the number of HIV-infected patients in India had gone up only by 28.000 from the previous year.
But health campaigners have dismissed ministers claims that the country had shrunk the growth rate of new HIV infections by 95 percent.
Activists in India said the new statistics perturbed them as no non-governmental organization working with people with AIDS had registered such a drop in demand for their services.
Kilde: The Push Journal
