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Caring for AIDS patients
GOUTAM GHOSH
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The Indian Red Cross Society's decision to set up a day-care centre for monitoring and treating the AIDS-afflicted in and around the city is a welcome one.
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THE WORLD Health Day was observed recently by the Indian Red Cross Society (Tamil Nadu) at its regional headquarters on Montieth Road. There were no frills but speeches. The hawk-eyed, safari-clad security personnel, responsible for the safety of the Governor, P.S. Ramamohan Rao, stood like statues as speaker after speaker droned on.
The president of the Indian Red Cross Society, Tamil Nadu branch, Sarojini Varadappan, briefly narrated the history of the Red Cross movement and the role it has played in natural calamities in India. One of the notable points was the IRCS decision to allow a day-care centre for monitoring and treating the AIDS-afflicted in and around the city.
This centre, that has been scheduled to open its doors on Tamil New Year's Day, will be run by Dr. C.N. Deivanayagam, former superintendent of the T.B. sanatorium in Tambaram, and at present, the trustee of Health India Foundation.
Located on the second floor, the Integrated Allopathic and Siddha Medical Clinic for HIV/AIDS has been tentatively given some floor space that will need to be partitioned in due course of time. Obviously, there is a lot that needs to be done to get the centre going, but what matters is the complete commitment of the physicians.
The move to set up such day-care centres should have come sooner than it has. Not everybody can afford the luxury of private AIDS clinics, and something definitely needs to be provided for those to whom such private interventions will be absolutely and always out of reach.
According to sources in the Government-run sanatorium near Tambaram, the number of in-patients has declined dramatically in the last one year. Though the number of in-patients increased from 6259 (1999) to 6791 (2000), it declined to 2876 (2001) — nearly 60 per cent decline. This does not mean that the incidence of the disease has come down.
The HIV/AIDS data for Tamil Nadu till December 2001 is dismal at best. The average number of admissions a day in the sanatorium is 24. And Chennai could be proud of having the first reported case of AIDS in India, detected at the Chennai Medical College in 1986. Though the data about the incidence is inaccurate and there could be a tendency to underestimate the reality of the crisis, more than 40,00,000 have been infected with HIV in India since 1986.
The mode of transmission of the disease is overwhelmingly heterosexual (95.7 per cent according to UNAIDS), but there does not seem to be adequate awareness among the people and readiness of health professionals to restrict the spread of the disease.
The least that could be done is to have as many day-care centres as possible, which will obviate the need for in-patient care. That will save money and yet would not compromise the intervention. At the day-care unit with three physicians trained in Siddha medicine and Dr. Deivanayagam as the allopath in charge, the patients will be given both Siddha and allopathic drugs to battle the infection.
You will agree that the day-care unit will need funds and one hopes that pharmaceutical companies and philanthropists would step in to help.
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