Access to AIDS Supplies in Hospitals in Indonesia

The Indonesian Ministry of Health has been trying to reassure people with AIDS by telling them that it would provide them with enough antivirals to treat it after depleting stocks in some hospitals.

Aditya Wardhana, spokesperson for the Indonesia AIDS Alliance, a nongovernmental organization, said at a press conference that at least 29 hospitals and health centers in the country had stocked a type of antiviral.

The Ministry of Health confirmed that a call for tenders had failed last year for the purchase of some of these drugs, but that it had imported them through Global Fund, an international funding agency for the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

But Indonesia's AIDS Alliance has called for the fund to have more emergency supplies and has urged President Goku Widodo to step in.

Data from the Ministry of Health indicate that more than 300,000 patients in Indonesia have used antiretroviral doses last year, while statistics have shown that the number of people living with AIDS in Indonesia was 630000, while the number of deaths due to the virus was 39 000.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is seeking US $ 14 billion to scale up its efforts to fight the epidemic, said Peter Sands, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria. Outbreaks that kill millions

He said the money could help save 16 million lives and halve the number of deaths from the three diseases

These funds will be used to strengthen health systems in poor countries that are not equipped to cope with current epidemics and are unable to cope with new potential epidemics.

"The new threats mean that there is no central region," Sands said in a statement. "We must protect and consolidate the gains we have made, otherwise these achievements will erase, deaths and deaths will increase, and the chances of eliminating epidemics will disappear.

In the case of AIDS, some 37 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and about 15 million are not receiving the necessary antiretrovirals.