 The medical treatment for AIDS sufferers is costly.  Children are born with the disease.  Patient files and reports are meticulous.  Being sick in such conditions is catastrophic. | The HIV /AIDS programme
Free treatment for AIDS patients is a project particularly close to Dr. Jack’s heart. He said that he worked in the Bengal since 1972 and it is his best work.
In spite of the large number of humanitarian organisations working in this area of India and in spite of the number of government initiatives, the majority of these services do not extend beyond preventative education or intervention aimed only at high risk groups. Only a few organisations distribute treatments directly and to a very restricted number of people. Even the means to basic survival are limited for the poorest people and the medicines to treat the disease are completely out of reach even though they are subsidized. Calcutta Rescue makes it possible for the poor to access these medicines.
Calcutta Rescue is the only ones able to procure the Stage 2 antiretrovirals for patients who are resistant to the Stage 1 treatment. The cost of these medicines is so prohibitive that none of these patients could get hold of them not even those in the “lower middle class” bracket. There is no other free source for the 65 patients in the programme and some of them have covered great distances from neighbouring states to get the free treatment offered.
Calcutta Rescue works closely with the School of Tropical Medicine of Calcutta (School of Tropical Medicine of Calcutta), a leading light in the domain of HIV / AIDS, as well as with the Medical College & Hospital Kolkata (Medical College & Hospital Kolkata) on all issues surrounding the disease. The School of Tropical Medicine regularly asks Calcutta Rescue to finance and carry out highly complicated diagnoses. Calcutta Rescue also finances and procures vaccines (pneumonia and hepatitis B) for patients who need them and this is done in collaboration with the School of Tropical Medicine.
Until recently, Calcutta Rescue was monitoring 50 patients who tested positive. But this number has risen to 65 thanks to pharmaceutical companies reducing their prices of treatments and special donations by friends of Calcutta Rescue in England and Ireland.
Medical treatments, aftercare and administrative fees have risen to around 9,000 Francs per month. The number of infected patients continues to rise especially among those suffering from tuberculosis or anaemia.
| AIDS
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have become a major priority for all world health organisations throughout the world over the last few years. At the end of 2006 there were an estimated 39.5 million people infected with HIV /AIDS and of those, 37.2 million adults and 2.3 million children. More than 20 million people are believed to have died of this disease.
The annual figures show that India ranks highest in the number of people infected. Throughout the whole of India the virus has concentrated in the heart of the poor and marginalised groups including many women and children.
Currently there are no cures for HIV and nothing seems to suggest that this is going to change in the near future. Medicine has made progress and a series of treatments has become available to halt the disease’s progression. These medicines inhibit the virus and are designed to keep the amount of HIV in the body at a low level. The symptoms abate. |
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