Wednesday, Jan 15, 2003
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Tamil Nadu-Chennai
By Ramya Kannan
The two-bed unit, being set up by the YRG Centre for AIDS Research and Education, will serve as the first such-dedicated unit serving the PLWHA. It will be equipped with a ventilator and suction equipment, state-of the-art laboratory facilities and doctors will be present round the clock. There is a rather tragic prelude to the setting up of this centre. On April 19, 2002, the then president of Indian Network of Positive Persons, Ashok Pillai, died because he was denied ventilator support when he lapsed into convulsions. That evening, there were many who felt that Ashok could have lived if only the facility had been provided to him at the right time. Before Ashok Pillai, there were countless other unchronicled deaths — as persons who made bold to declare their `positivity' were denied ventilator support, again and again. "We get the same treatment everywhere, be it government hospitals or the tertiary care set up. If we declare that we are HIV positive, we can rest assured that we will be shown the door. ICU care is simply not available to us," says P. Kausalya of the Positive Women Network of South India. She recounts incidents where persons were turned away from the Government General Hospital. Even if the patient does not reveal the HIV status, the mandatory tests that the hospital will run on him/her will immediately show that he/she is positive. "In one such case in 1999, we were told to take the patient home, as "he was going to die anyway". In this context, she welcomes the ICU as a reality that will change the way PLWHA are treated. "At least now, there is a unit that we can turn to and be assured that we will be taken care of," she says. At the same time, the community of persons living with the infection make it clear that it is important to broadbase strategies to handle medical care facilities in the State. "Intensive care facilities must be made available to all. If proper scientific procedures are followed to clean and sterilise hospital equipment, using the same equipment for PLWHA will not create problems. But, poor maintenance will lead to transmission of other infections too," says a representative of INP+. It has been the argument of activists that all procedures must be made available to all, without discrimination merely on grounds of seropositivity. While the YRG Care has brought in a much needed service for the community, it points out that at a conservative estimate, there are at least 22,826 persons living with HIV/AIDS in Tamil Nadu (Source: Tamil Nadu AIDS Control Society). " Two beds in one ICU are insufficient to meet the needs. A ventilator facility is basic and must be made available to us," says Ms. Kausalya. And the greatest task, they lay at the door of the State Government. The first step is to make available ICU facilities in the public sector to everybody. "Once the primary sector makes it clear that facilities will be provided for HIV positive people, the tertiary sector will be bound to follow. And unless this happens, a lot more persons who have the infection will continue to die, not for the reason that there are no facilities to help them, but because for them, the facilities were denied," according to an INP+ member.
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