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Over one million people in India living with HIV/AIDS are without access to the much-needed anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, a new international report said today (Sunday, October 03, 2010), suggesting that India should consider issuing compulsory licensing for the increasing availability of drugs.

Indian children suffering from HIV posing for the camera
According to a joint report issued by the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and UNICEF, said that India, the world’s second most population nation after China, had made progress in scaling up access over the years, but added that given its robust generic drug industry it could have done better.

“India has done well in scaling up access to the ARV therapy over the last seven years,” says a senior WHO official, suggesting there is still a huge gap to address.

The universal gap between those needing urgent ARV treatment for HIV/AIDS the world over and those unable to have any access to it has climbed to over 15 million people and there is an urgent need for funds to the tune of USD$10 billion, says Rifat Atun, a senior official of the Global Fund which is the main provider of assistance to countries afflicted with HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

India now ranks third in “scaling up access”, after South Africa and Kenya during the last five years.

However, it needs to cross some distance for ensuring universal access for all its HIV/AIDS sufferers.

The HIV/AIDS worldwide logo
Around 3,200,074 have received ARV therapy in India at the end of last year as compared to 2,034,581 patients during the previous year. However, between 1.1 and 1.4 million HIV/AIDS patients have no access for ARV therapy in India.

Given the number of health professionals and the state of the art generic drug industry in India, the performance on the HIV/AIDS front could be far better in comparison with other low-income countries in Southern Africa, say analysts.

India must consider issuing compulsory licenses for ensuring free access to second and third-line treatment for HIV/AIDS patients whose number is steadily climbing. Compulsory licensing enables a national government to revoke a license issued to a patent holder and thereby, allow other parties to produce and sell a patented product for non-commercial purposes.

Several industrialized nations resorted to compulsory licensing to enable their national health departments to procure medicines at low prices so as to provide free of cost in government hospitals.

India is yet to issue a compulsory license despite its rising HIV/AIDS patients who now need second and third-line treatment.

In 2006, Thailand issued compulsory license for the production of patented drugs for its HIV-infected population. Later, Brazil also issued compulsory license for the production of patent-drugs produced by an American pharmaceutical company despite enormous pressure from the US.

“Ultimately, the decision to issue a compulsory license depends on the national government,” says Mari Angela Simao, a senior UNAIDS official.

The Church is still very silent on this issue when it is expected to be at the forefront of the problem.

It is time that all the Churches should shun politics and differences and join hands inter-denominationally and come out with innovative strategies and ideas to maximize the awareness among all classes of people. Church should also think of building hospices for the HIV/AIDS infected, apart from schools, dispensaries that are usually started as a social wing. These should be constructed where people can have access and take maximum benefit out of such facilities.

Trevain Raj Kumar
Trevain Raj Kumar a Christian who founded Neolife Mission to cater to the needs of these HIV/AIDS infected/affected people and also runs a Terry’s Kids Home for these victims in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh state. His ministry is run in conjunction with He Intends Victory (www.heintendsvictory.com) which is based in Irvine, California, and is one of the early pioneers of Christians working in the HIV/AIDS field.

Trevain is an Indian by origin and was working in the IT field, when God called him into full time ministry in 2002. He set aside his secular job and in faithfulness towards God’s call he started Neolife Mission.

Many children received help and support through Neo Life Mission and they could make this happen with their self support.

In learning more about this work, I was amazed and touched by the way God is using and working through Trevain’s Neolife Mission. Here is one of those who got blessed by the service of Neo Life Mission.

Sarita today with her Bible
Sarita, an HIV infected lady came to Trevain for counseling and she revealed that her husband had left her after finding out that she had been with HIV. She told him that she “did not want to die” and leave her young children behind. She had severe tuberculosis at the time and the lymph glands on her neck were swollen and one or two had even burst, emitting a foul smell. She was in a hopeless condition with her CD4 count at only 97. [CD4 cells are a type of white blood cell that fights infection. Another name for them is T-helper cells. CD4 cells are made in the spleen, lymph nodes, and thymus gland, which are part of the lymph or infection-fighting system. CD4 cells move throughout your body, helping to identify and destroy germs such as bacteria and viruses. Keeping your CD4 count high can reduce complications of HIV disease and extend your life.)

Trevain told her about Jesus Christ and asked her to accept Him as her own personal savior. Later he encouraged her to follow Christ and taught her how to pray and to put her trust in the Lord. She there and then made her decision to follow Jesus and within three months, she started to gain strength and her TB report showed no traces of the disease.

In fact, she began to put on weight and when she went to the doctor for her CD4 again, and the doctor asked her whether she was taking any special medicine as her health was improving. She said that her only “special medicine was Jesus Christ”. A year after her first test, she went again to test her CD4 count and the doctors were again spellbound since her count raised to an amazing 847.

Sarita was very happy and started attending a local church near her home.

Trevan baptizes Sarita
She then came back to Neolife Mission and requested Trevain to baptize her and he was delighted to do so. Now she is a true believer, her son is studying and is being well supported by Neolife. She recently got a house keeping job in one of India’s prestigious IT centers, Infosys, and is earning a handsome salary.

Sarita’s is just one of many lives that have been transformed and blessed by this caring ministry. You too can join to bring in change.

For more details on Neo Life Mission’s work please visit: www.neolifemission.org

Or if you want to know more about this project or help Neolife Mission please send an e-mail to: trevain@gmail.com

Note: ANS founder, Dan Wooding, has written a moving book called “He Intends Victory” about people living with HIV/AIDS and how Jesus touched them. To get a free copy, go to: http://heintendsvictory.org/products-page

Jennie Yeaman was pregnant with her first child when a routine blood test revealed she was HIV-positive. “I got it from having sex with my husband,” she said. “Imagine that.”
That was 18 years ago, before anti-retroviral medications transformed AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic condition. She was overjoyed that her newborn son wasn’t infected but didn’t know if she would live to see his first birthday.
Her timing couldn’t have been better. Around the time of her son’s birth, HIV medications came on the market that have enabled patients to live normal lives for decades.
Now the 48-year-old Huber Heights mother has different goals: “I want to see my son get married. I want to hold my grandbabies.”
Her future seems uncertain again, however, because the Ohio Department of Health canceled her enrollment in the state’s Ryan White program, also known as Ohio HIV-AIDS Drug Assistance Program (OHDAP) that provides HIV meds for 5,000 Ohioans. She was among 257 patients kicked out of the program because she earned more than $32,490 a year.
“I got the news on Friday, July 2, and my meds were gone by the following Tuesday,” she said.
Less than three months later, she lost her job.
Although her lost income made her eligible again for the OHDAP program, she was forced to join the 232 patients on a waiting list.
“Am I waiting for someone to die, so that I can get back on the list?” she asked. “When I was first diagnosed, HIV was a death sentence, and I’m worried I could be looking at the same situation. If you take away my meds, it’s not a chronic condition any more.”
For now, she’s doing what many others are doing in her situation — working with her case worker to get her meds through a pharmaceutical company’s patient assistance program. But that’s a stop-gap measure that comes with no future guarantees.
She’s thinking of protesting before the Columbus Statehouse with a poster bearing the slogan, “No Job, No Insurance and No Meds.”
She declared, “I am here and I’m willing to fight. I did not make it for 18 years in order to roll over now.”
Hunter Cardwell is still getting his HIV meds through OHDAP, but the program has stopped supplying his other prescriptions for multiple health problems that have made it virtually impossible to work. The 49-year-old Dayton man stopped taking his diabetes medication and recently refused to be hospitalized because he didn’t want yet another oppressive stack of bills. “My medical bills go straight into the trash,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t pay them.”
Cardwell had high hopes that things would be better under the Obama administration. “For me, things have only gotten worse,” he said. “I used to think I would never leave Ohio because I got so much assistance. Now I don’t know.”
Advocates for AIDS patients are disheartened by the new OHDAP eligibility requirements. “Who would have thought that, in 2010, we’d still be fighting for medications to keep people with HIV/AIDS alive?” asked Bill Hardy, executive director of the Dayton-based AIDS Resource Center Ohio.
Kevin Sullivan, executive director of the non-profit Ohio AIDS Coalition, said that the stricter eligibility requirements came about because of a combination of dwindling resources and increased enrollment. “The Ryan White program was supposed to be temporary when it began in 1990,” Sullivan noted. “They say there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program. But it’s not a long-term solution. There’s a great deal of hope that health care reform legislation will greatly benefit our clients.”
Anti-retroviral medications not only prolong life but also reduce the risk of transmission, said Dr. Jeffrey Weinstein, an HIV specialist at Miami Valley Hospital. “When they’re on treatment these patients are ‘viral low’ and can’t transmit HIV to anyone else,” he said. “These meds are expensive but they prevent much more expensive hospitalizations down the road.”
When Weinstein did his residency in the early ‘90s he recalled that “we never worried about the future with our HIV patients, about their heart problems or cholesterol levels, because they wouldn’t live that long. Today the people who die from AIDS are mostly people who don’t know they have it or are not taking their meds. The progress has been really amazing to see, and it’s disconcerting to see it go down the drain because of funding problems.”
In July Weinstein wrote Gov. Ted Strickland, urging him to pump more money into the OHDAP program. “Many patients in the developing world now have access to these treatments via generous donations by the pharmaceutical companies — governments including the U.S., and private philanthropy,” he wrote. “Unfortunately now many in our own communities will be forced onto waiting lists to receive treatments that are among the most effective (and cost-effective) of any ever developed by medical science?”
On Sept. 2, Strickland announced that $12.8 million in Medicaid funds would be restored to OHDAP. Weinstein said he’s gratified that Strickland listened but noted the reprieve is only for this fiscal year “and next year we may be in a budget crunch again.”
Ohio’s projected budget hole for its next two-year budget is projected to be as high as $8 billion.
Thanks to the infusion of new money, patients who have been on the waiting list before July 8 may now be eligible for the program. But that won’t help Yeaman, who lost her job in September.
“They’re not just deciding about dollars, they’re deciding about human lives,” she said. “What are they going to tell my son — ‘Sorry, your mom’s not worth the money?’”