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JAKARTA (Reuters) – The Indonesian Ministry of Health wanted to reassure people with AIDS by offering to provide enough antiviral drugs to treat them after the depletion of stocks in some hospitals.
Aditya Wardhana, of the NGO Alliance Against AIDS in Indonesia, said at a press conference that at least 29 hospitals and health centers in the country were running out of stockpiles. 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.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, more than 300,000 patients in Indonesia used antiretroviral doses last year.
"The country has enough of these drugs until May," said Injko Sussielain Majdalain, director general of the medical and pharmaceutical sectors at the ministry.
"There will be an offer next month not to affect our stocks," she said on Saturday.
Patients who can not get the drug can use tablets containing the same ingredients and there is enough stock left until December, she said.
But some patients are worried about the possibility of changing treatment.
"We are, of course, terrorized," said AIDS patient Bibi Rivona Nasutone, who has been on antiretroviral therapy for 10 years at the press conference.
"Will I survive by the end of the year?"
(Reuters)
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