KATHMANDU,
The National Centre for AIDS & STD Control (NCASC) is likely to run out of the pediatric Anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs next month. This will affect over 300 HIV-infected children across the country who depend on the life saving drug.
The looming shortage, which is likely to last for the next four-six months, will affect the children’s medication against the deadly disease.
Dr Ramesh Kharel, the NCASC director, admitted to the imminent drug crisis and said the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which supplies the drugs, has stopped the supply now. “We have been notifying the UNDP about the ARV for the past 10 months. The NCASC’s role is only to distribute the drugs,” Kharel said. UN officials, however, attribute the delay to the delay in the release of funds by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) Round-7 Phase 2.
“We signed the grant last week and expect to receive new GFATM fun
ds by mid-October,” George Ionita, the project manager of GFATM and the DFID HIV/AIDS Programme Management Unit-UNDP Nepal, said.“From the moment orders are placed with international suppliers, it takes, on an average, between four-six months for goods to arrive in Nepal.”
Ionita also said very few people living with HIV are using the ARV drugs and that the international ARV drug manufacturers do not provide less than 2,500 bottles of the drugs at a time. While the quantity of the drugs the 300 children in Nepal need is far less than the 2,500 bottles, a large chunk of the drugs went to waste in earlier occasions. In Nepal, the UNDP provides the drugs funded by the Global Fund (GF). However, a year ago, the Nepal government had tried to take over the authority of supplying the drugs.
The GF objected to the idea, saying that the Logistics Management Division (LMD) under the Health Ministry will not be able to handle the supply. The plan has been stalled and the UNDP has been given the authority to supply the drugs until July 2012.
Sunil Babu Pant, a Constituent Assembly member and the President of Blue Diamond Society, in an open email sent
to Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai on Thursday, has said that the around 5,100 PLHIV (People Living with HIV)—300 among them children—who are on the ARV drugs, will have to face dire consequences. “There is an acute shortage of ARV drugs in Nepal,” Pant wrote. He urged the PM to take steps to end the plight of the PLHIV.
HIV/AIDS activist Rajeev Kafle said that the ARV drugs for adults, too, will run out in about two months. NCASC officials, however, claim that they have enough stock of the drugs for adults.
