Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, November 14:
The issues that HIV positive children and their parents used to faced earlier in administering the ART drugs would become a thing of the past with ART paediatric drug specially made for such young patients being rolled out from JN Hospital and RIMS now.
The paediatric drug formulations for children infected with HIV has been rolled out under a special programme of National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to bring solace to hundreds of parents, whose children are on Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART), the only treatment available till date for people living with HIV/AIDS.
ART, the multi-drug treatment, prolongs life and enhances its quality among people living with HIV/AIDS.
In the absence of any specific drug for treating children infected with HIV/AIDS, the ART drug which was meant for adult patient was earlier administered to the young patient by dividing the adult dosage into three fractions, in accordance to the child's weight.
Maintaining the accuracy of the dosages was also a major problem since the tablets were to be broken manually.
The new paediatric drug, however, would solve this tricky issue as the combo-medicine of three drugs is now made available in one tablet per day for the child.
The medicine is also available in the form of syrup, but it needs to be stored in cool temperature.
The paediatric drug facility has been made available at RIMS from today while the same is being rolled out from JN Hospital since October 31, informed Deputy Director of Manipur State AIDS Control Society Dr Kh Pramodkumar when contacted by The Sangai Express today.
Under the guidelines of NACO, MACS started provided ART facilities to HIV/AIDS patients in Manipur from April 2004 at RIMS and from December of the same year at JN Hospital.
Among the patients who have been getting the said treatment from RIMS and JN Hospital, 154 of them are children, though the actual number of registered infected children is 263.An official from MACS said that all these 154 children who are already on ART treatment would be, henceforth, given the paediatric drugs along with inclusion of new patients after proper screening and testing of their CD4.MACS is targeting to cover 649 such patients, the official added.
The official further informed along with ART treatment, the nutritional support of these young patients is very essential.
But there has been no such support under NACO.
It is imperative on the part of the State Government to formulate a policy in this regard or to provide the nutritional support through the existing ICDS centres of the Government of India.
According to a report of UNAIDS, the number of children living with the virus in India upto 2004 was 1.20,000.NACO would provide paediatric drug formulations to 10,000 HIV/AIDS infected children below 15 years within 2006-07.Normally the cost of the ART drug in the open market for adults is Rs 1,200 per month while for juniors in the age group of 10 to 14 years is Rs 800 per month while the baby dose costs only Rs 600 per month.
NACO provides these medicines free of cost to all the ART centres.
However, one has to pay a nominal amount of Rs 10 as registration charges to these ART centres.